I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. Nor that I disagree with them, of course.
US to Tell US Citizens to Be Vigilant in Europe
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/us-may-issue-warning-on-public-places-in-europe/19658283
Watch out for members of “The Region of Peace!” ~Bob. Excerpt: The Obama administration will warn U.S. citizens to be vigilant as they travel in Europe, updated guidance prompted by al-Qaida threats, American and European officials told The Associated Press on Saturday. Such a move could have negative implications for European tourism, business and diplomacy if travelers fear there's a possibility of terror attacks. The State Department will issue a "travel alert" for Europe on Sunday morning that advises Americans to stay vigilant on the continent because of threat information, senior U.S. officials told the AP. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because a final decision has not been announced. "This travel alert is a cumulative result of information we have received over an extended periods," one senior administration official said. "We are constantly monitoring a range of threat streams and have monitored this and others for some time." State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley declined to comment on the matter. But he said the administration remains focused on al-Qaida threats to U.S. interests and will take appropriate steps to protect Americans.
Mexican pirates killing of American boater creates outrage
http://www.examiner.com/law-enforcement-in-national/mexican-pirates-killing-of-american-boater-creates-outrage
Just take a Qur’an out with you. If the bad guys appear, threaten to burn it, and Obama will turn out the Navy. ~Bob. Law enforcement officials in Texas issued warnings Friday about Mexican pirates trolling the waters of a U.S.-Mexico border lake after a tourist was shot and killed while his wife escaped a hail of bullets and raced her Jet Ski back to American soil. The incident has renewed calls for federal action by border security advocates. Search and rescue teams patrolled the U.S. side of Falcon Lake searching for Colorado tourist David Michael Hartley, 30, whose wife, Tiffany Hartley, told police he was shot in the back of the head Thursday after being ambushed by gunmen on boats. The Texas Department of Public Safety announced during a press conference Friday that Hartley was believed to have been killed but his body had been found. The gunmen are suspected Mexican pirates who prowl Falcon Lake, a favorite spot for water-skiing and bass fishing. There have been five previously reported pirate attacks on that lake this year. The shooting has led Texas officials to warn American boaters to use caution on the 60-mile lake, in addition to issuing its initial warning following three pirate attacks. Although many Americans are outraged over this latest border incident, President Barack Obama and his Administration did not comment on the vicious attack on American citizens as well as the unbridled assault on Americans in general. During a press conference held by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, there was not one word about this unprovoked attack on U.S. citizens.
Wilderness: Expansion and (Unlawful) Beneficiary Use
http://thewesterner.blogspot.com/2010/10/wilderness-expansion-and-unlawful.html
Excerpt: The Battle of Juarez is showing signs that the good guys are not prevailing. The Juarez newspaper, El Diario de Juarez, has cried uncle in its mixed stance of reporting the progress of the war. In the front page editorial that appeared recently, the editor waved the white flag and asked the cartels publicly what they want from him. The murder of a photographer and another reporter in the recent past are hitting far too close to home for him to continue to be a brave purveyor of the truth. In a city ravaged by nearly 7,000 deaths since 2006 and the loss of as many as 40% of its businesses, the fear of the cartels is not a surprise. The only question the El Diario should have asked is should it be uncle or tio and should it be capitalized? Can any American imagine the chaos that would occur in the United States if a city the size of Detroit had experienced the loss of 40% of its businesses and suffered twice the number of casualties that occurred on 9/11? Similarly, can any logical American buy the administration’s premise that border cities are safer than they have been in years? Numbers never lie, but liars are gifted with numbers, right? Perhaps the logical place to be looking these days is not in the cities, but in the country where conflicting governmental policies and agendas have created physical voids now overrun with lawlessness.
The rise of black Republicans
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10276/1091893-373.stm
It's a big story this year, but you don't hear much about it --DH. Excerpt: I bet you haven't heard of Tim Scott, Allen West or Ryan Frazier. If they were Democrats, I might lose that bet. But they're not. Mr. Scott, Mr. West and Mr. Frazier are three of the 14 black candidates running for Congress as Republicans this November. Thirty-two black Republicans ran in the primaries. Most of the 14 are running all-but-hopeless races against black Democratic incumbents in black majority districts. But Mr. Scott, running in South Carolina, is a virtual cinch to win. Mr. West (Florida) and Mr. Frazier (Colorado) are in races that are judged tossups. If all three win, that would be a post-Reconstruction record. The largest number of black Republicans to serve together in the House in the last century is two, J.C. Watts (Oklahoma) and Gary Franks (Connecticut) between 1995 and 1997. There haven't been any since Mr. Watts retired in 2003. One might think the resurgence of black Republicans, coming as it does at a time when a black Democrat is president, would rate more than a feature story or two in the national media. But that would conflict with the liberal meme that Republicans are racist. Many liberals also say Republicans are anti-immigrant, even though Hispanic Republicans are poised to win a Senate seat in Florida (Marco Rubio) and gubernatorial races in New Mexico (Susana Martinez) and Nevada (Brian Sandoval). Nine Hispanic Republicans are seeking election to the House. Four -- Bill Flores and Quico Canseco in Texas, Jaime Herrera in Washington state and David Rivera in Florida -- are even-money or better to win. The black Republican candidates (12 men and two women) are impressive people. I'm most impressed with Mr. West, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was a hero to his troops in Iraq. Their stories are similar. Most were raised in poverty or near-poverty by a parent or parents who instilled in them conservative values. Most have been working hard since they were children. Half the men are military veterans.
California Death Penalty Once Again Thwarted by Thug Huggers
http://townhall.com/columnists/DebraJSaunders/2010/10/03/california_death_penalty_once_again_thwarted_by_thug_huggers
“Thug Huggers”? There’s a great tag. Expect to see it again in my comments on this blog. ~Bob. Excerpt: On Oct. 28, 1980, Albert Greenwood Brown snatched Susan Jordan, 15, raped and strangled her to death with her own shoelace. Brown, who was on parole after raping a 14-year-old girl, then spent the night tormenting the dead girl's parents over the phone, telling them that they would never see their daughter again and where to find the girl's half-nude corpse and belongings. A jury sentenced him to death for that crime. Last Wednesday, almost 30 years later, Brown was scheduled to be executed. Of course, it didn't happen. Various judges intervened, the state's meager supply of lethal-injection drugs was about to expire -- and so California's death penalty is on hold until 2011. There hasn't been an execution in California since January 2006. In February of that year, federal Judge Jeremy Fogel essentially ordered a de facto moratorium on California's three-drug lethal-injection protocol because there was "undue risk" -- not that he knew if it had ever happened -- that a condemned murderer could "suffer excessive pain when he is executed."
Muslim Extremists Murder Christian Family in Pakistan
http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/pakistan/26168/
Guess they didn’t get the “Islam is a religion of peace” memo. Had to murder the kids, too. Nits make lice. Note it’s always “extremists.” How many do there have to be before it’s not considered “extreme” in Islam? ~Bob. Excerpt: Islamic extremists killed a Christian lawyer, his wife and their five children in northwestern Pakistan this week for mounting a legal challenge against a Muslim who was charging a Christian exorbitant interest, local sources said.
LHC upholds death for blasphemy accused
http://tribune.com.pk/story/56578/lhc-upholds-death-for-blasphemy-accused/
This is the “tolerance” people can expect anywhere a Muslim majority enacts Shari’a law. ~Bob. Excerpt: A division bench of the Lahore High Court on Wednesday confirmed the death sentence handed down to a blasphemy convict and ordered that he be hanged till death. This is the second case of its kind in the country when the death sentence of a blasphemy accused has been confirmed by the LHC since inception of the blasphemy law. An Additional District and Sessions Judge Lahore on May 27, 2002 had awarded Wajihul Hassan death sentence for allegedly uttering blasphemous remarks against the Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and other prophets. He was also accused of hurting religious sentiments of the complainant – Senior Advocate Muhammad Ismail Qureshi.
Curb Corruption or Lose the War
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703440604575496131772049018-lMyQjAxMTAwMDMwMDEzNDAyWj.html
Excerpt: President Hamid Karzai recently intervened to free Mohammed Zia Saleh, a top security aide arrested on charges of corruption in Afghanistan. He also made it clear he wants to end U.S. aid to the corruption fighters who pulled Mr. Saleh out of his home in handcuffs. It then emerged that Mr. Saleh has been on the payroll of my old employer, the CIA. This is a perfect illustration of how different government agencies such as the CIA and the Defense Department can work at cross purposes even in a war zone—something that is familiar to me from serving in South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. As a former agency case officer and official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, where I led its counterinsurgency effort, I know the CIA has a weak leg to stand on. An anonymous former agency official claimed in the Washington Post last month that putting people in Mr. Karzai's inner circle on the payroll was necessary because "the head of state is not going to tell you everything." This is misleading. Finding out what is going on in Kabul requires developing relationships with Afghans who trust you and will tell you truthfully what is going on—not because they want to buy Dubai real estate, but because they think it's in their country's best interests.
One Nation Rally Respect for Our WWII Vets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCcwXlvb74Y&feature=player_embedded
After the Glenn beck rally, the pictures showed all the trash picked up and bagged. Compare with this. Typical leftists. Bleat about the environment and trash the surroundings. ~Bob.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Political Digest for October 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.
“No” Vote, for Tax Vote
http://taxbitesandtastymorsels.com/?p=595
Good blog. ~Bob. Excerpt: So, why do we taxpayers employ members of Congress again? It seems the only things they do get done, we don’t need, and the things we do need, they don’t get done. A vote on the fate of the Bush Tax cuts is the single most important issue for our economy today, and in her final act late last night before the House was to adjourn for the month of October, Nancy Pelosi cast the tie-breaking vote, not to vote on the issue. In the 210 to 209 decision, many Democrats dared to defy Madame Speaker, because they have heard the citizens of this country, who demand and deserve an answer on the impending tax situation. These representatives were clearly unhappy with the actions of the Speaker and strongly voiced their opinions after the vote. On November 2, the electorate will likely make its voice heard as well … at the voting booth. And, with any mercy at all, we will be spared the recurring nightmare of Pelosi beating the gavel come the new year. A recent study by the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, Obama Tax Hikes: The Economic and Fiscal Effects, found that the Obama Tax hikes would destroy an average of 693,000 jobs every year through 2020; drain $726 billion from disposable income, $38 billion from personal savings and $33 billion from business investments; raise taxes on the 55 percent of all joint filers earning more than $250,000 who run small businesses; and cost nonfarm small businesses and seniors significantly higher taxes. Much of the tax increase on seniors would come from increased taxes on dividends, which is a primary source of income for many seniors.
Worth Reading: Why Is He Sending Them?
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/charles-krauthammer/2010/10/01/why-is-he-sending-them/
Excerpt: From the beginning, the call to arms was highly uncertain. On Dec. 1, 2009, commander in chief Barack Obama orders 30,000 more Americans into battle in Afghanistan. But in the very next sentence, he announces that an American withdrawal will begin after 18 months. Astonishing. A surge of troops -- overall, Obama has tripled our Afghan force -- with a declaration not of war but of ambivalence. Nine months later, Marine Corps Commandant James Conway admitted that this decision was "probably giving our enemy sustenance." This wasn't conjecture, he insisted, but the stuff of intercepted Taliban communications testifying to their relief that they simply had to wait out the Americans. What kind of commander in chief sends tens of thousands of troops to war announcing in advance a fixed date for beginning their withdrawal? One who doesn't have his heart in it. One who doesn't really want to win but is making some kind of political gesture. One who thinks he has to be seen as trying but is preparing the ground -- meaning, the political cover -- for failure. Until now, the above was just inference from the president's public rhetoric. No longer. Now we have the private quotes. Bob Woodward's book, drawing on classified memos and interviews with scores of national security officials, has Obama telling his advisers: "I want an exit strategy." He tells the country publicly that Afghanistan is a "vital national interest," but he tells his generals that he will not do the kind of patient institution-building that is the very essence of the counterinsurgency strategy that Gens. McChrystal and Petraeus crafted and that he -- Obama -- adopted. Moreover, he must find an exit because "I can't lose the whole Democratic Party." This admission is the most crushing of all. First, isn't this the party that in two consecutive presidential campaigns -- John Kerry's and then Obama's -- argued vociferously that Afghanistan is the good war, the right war, the war of necessity, the central front in the war on terror? Now, after acceding to power and being given charge of that very war, Obama confides that he must retreat lest that very same party abandon him. What happened in the interim? Did it suddenly develop a faint heart? Or was the party disingenuous about the Afghan War all along, using it as a convenient club with which to attack George W. Bush over Iraq, while protecting Democrats from the charge of being reflexively anti-war? Whatever the reason, is it not Obama's job as president and party leader to bring the party with him? This is the man who made Berlin coo, America swoon and the Nobel committee lose its mind. Yet he cannot get his own party to follow him on what he insists is a matter of vital national interest? (The troops serve and fight and bleed and die because they are better men—and now women too—than the man ordering them to battle. But that is not new. ~Bob)
Excellent column: From the Unbelievable to the Passé
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/from-the-unbelievable-to-the-passe/?singlepage=true
Excerpt: Everywhere one looks statism is a failure. Contrast resource-rich Venezuela with Chile. Juxtapose Cuba to Colombia. Of course, compare Dark Age North Korea with the 21st-century South. Look at the UK in 1954 and 1990. They are rioting in Europe not to embrace socialism, but in petulant fashion to find someone somehow to pay for it — as if “they” and “them” are partying in some remote Aegean island, with vaults of stashed euros. Whether hard communism or soft socialism, statism does not work. We all know why — it goes against human nature, rewarding mediocrity and punishing merit, professing egalitarianism for the masses, while the operators of the system, whether the old Soviet apparatchiks or the new crony EU Brussels bureaucrats, satisfy their appetites like capitalists. Ultimately, it is simply like coasting on a bike uphill. The last hard peddles are simply not enough to push the bike and rider over the hill: finally the brilliant small manufacturer, the lean contractor, the enterprising farmer, the late-into-the-night engineer — they cannot carry any longer the clerk, the auditor, the regulator, the tax man, and the bureaucrat who wish not merely to piggy-back onto the biker, but to try to stop his peddling even as they demand to get over the crest. (Going one-up on Lewis Caroll, here are 4 unbelievable things before breakfast. Ron P.)
Barbara Boxer Campaigners hire day laborers to hold protest signs against Carly Fiorina
http://www.breitbart.tv/boxer-campaigners-hire-day-laborers-to-protest-fiorina/
No word on their citizenship.
Sea Turtle extinction: not global warming
http://ticotimes.com/costa-rica/sea-turtle-extinction-stealing-eggs
Click through the pics. Pretty bad—but poor people gotta eat. We can’t have trade with them so they’d have jobs, ticks off the Unions and Democrats. ~Bob.
Obama's Campaign-Season Christianity
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/09/30/obamas-campaign-season-christi
Excerpt: Barack Obama threw his mom under the parish van on Tuesday, describing her as formlessly "spiritual" while casting himself as the self-made convert. "I am a Christian by choice," he said at a campaign event in New Mexico this week. In 2007, he said the opposite: that he became a Christian through his mother. "My mother was a Christian from Kansas…I was raised by my mother. So, I've always been a Christian," he told a voter who had inquired about his Islamic background. The woman at the campaign stop in New Mexico on Tuesday asked him to explain why he is a Christian and coupled it with another one about his support for abortion rights. The sequence of questions proved awkward, with the answer to the latter question rendering his answer to the first one meaningless."[The] precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead—being my brothers' and sisters' keeper, treating others as they would treat me," he said. He threw in a few more vague-sounding clichés and a paean to religious relativism for good measure, and reassured the lady that "I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith." (I think like many he is a secular humanist who believes in the state and the power of government to fix people. I don’t think he’s a Muslim or a Christian, except as convenient. ~Bob.)
Why do They Hate Us
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Do-They-Hate-Us-/124608/
Excerpt: I am only a decade out of graduate school—and I suppose it's possible that I am a disagreeable person—but I have had more than a few unpleasant conversations with complete strangers, and even some friends, in which they have expressed their anger about professors while knowing that I am one. (Here is an interesting article, containing some valid points. It is, in my opinion, missing two important things, one of which is that the antics of a few professors (e.g. Ward Churchill) demonstrate such arrogance and political extremism that they arouse real anger amongst the majority of Americans, and some of that spills over into suspicion of professors in general. The other factor is the generally liberal slant/Political Correctness of a significant fraction of professors, which again rubs very many Americans the wrong way. A recent example was the almost immediate condemnation of the Duke LaCrosse team accused of rape, in a letter signed by 80 faculty members, well before a thorough examination of the facts had begun; and when it turned out the accusation was false, there was no hint of apology from those same professors. We've had professors say that of 9-11 "we had it coming," or teach that it was the CIA/Mossad who really directed those planes, and we've had cases where professors gave poor marks to students whose essays on some assigned topic reached conclusions contrary to the professor's personal opinion on the topic. However exceptional such behaviors may be, they receive a good deal of publicity, and surely influence people's feelings, perhaps as much or more than what the writer below discusses. Any other thoughts on this? –Del read a book on this by a professor back in the 1970s called “This Beats Working for a Living.” ~Bob.)
Why Dems Are Going Down in November
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0910/ahlert.php3
Unless something totally unforeseen occurs, Democrats are poised to take a real beating in November. Their response to the impending disaster has run the gamut. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is in denial: "One thing I know for sure is that Democrats will retain their majority in the House of Representatives." Massachusetts Senator John Kerry is condescending: "We have an electorate that doesn't always pay that much attention to what's going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what's happening." President Obama is angry: "It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election." Why is the electorate ready to kick Democrats to the curb? Here's why:…… All of it centers around the ridiculous premise that America owes the world an apology for any number of shortcomings, many of which can only be alleviated by government-mandated "social justice." That would be the same social justice which demanded—and still demands—that Americans manifestly unqualified to own homes be given mortgages, regardless. Unknown to the majority of Americans, this precise mindset was part of the financial "reform" bill which also requires banks to lend a certain percentage of capital to minority-owned businesses, even if it means lowering their lending standards. Apparently progressives won't be satisfied with their odious social-engineering schemes until every sector of the American economy bears a striking resemblance to the housing sector. So far, Americans support financial reform because it's been framed as "Main Street versus "Wall Street." It's not. Like every other initiative undertaken by this Congress and this administration, it's the elevation of irresponsible and dishonest Americans over those willing to accept the consequences of their own behavior. There you have it. Democratic control for four years in Congress, and two in the White House has been exactly what many predicted: an ideologically-driven disaster of epic proportions.
British brothers 'behind Mumbai-style plot'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8035596/British-brothers-behind-Mumbai-style-plot.html
Didn’t get the memo. ~Bob. Excerpt: Two British brothers are said to be “at the heart” of an al-Qaeda plot to launch Mumbai-style terrorist attacks on the West. Intelligence sources say the pair are part of a 10-strong team who were planning to launch shooting sprees on cities in Britain, France and Germany. A Pakistani intelligence official, who is part of a team that has been tracking militants, said that they had been watching the two British brothers for nearly a year. In recent weeks the men had been in telephone contact with London as they sought help in securing weapons and preparing the plot.
Spain on strike: riot police and protesters clash during a nationwide general strike
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/8032557/Spain-on-strike-riot-police-and-protesters-clash-during-a-nationwide-general-strike.html
Don’t laugh. This is what happens when the money for entitlements runs out. ~Bob. Excerpt: Police break up a picket line that had entered a shop during a nationwide strike in Santiago de Compostela, northern Spain.
Deconstructing the Latest Health Care Fad: Accountable Care Organizations
http://www.heartland.org/healthpolicy-news.org/article/28449/Deconstructing_the_Latest_Health_Care_Fad_Accountable_Care_Organizations.html
Excerpt: The President’s health care reform bill includes numerous pilot projects and demonstration programs designed to test ways of lowering health care spending and improving quality. One such pilot program is Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), the latest fad among health policy wonks. Backers expect ACOs to raise the quality and lower the cost of patient care simultaneously. Detractors, on the other hand, describe them as “HMOs on steroids.” What’s the truth?
The Value Added Tax: Too Costly for the United States
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19880&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Excerpt: The United States is unusual in not having a valued-added tax (VAT), which is one reason the possible adop¬tion of a VAT has been a longstanding debate in U.S. tax policy, says Randall G. Holcombe, professor of economics at Florida State University. Most developed economies rely on a VAT for a substantial share of their tax revenue, so it is natural for the United States to look at the possibility of implementing a VAT, especially while huge budget deficits are forecast as far out as the forecasts go. While one can debate the merits of a VAT in other countries, the tax is not a good fit for the United States for many reasons, says Holcombe. A VAT would tax a base that has traditionally belonged to state governments. Its introduction would bring with it intergenerational inequities and slow economic growth. Its cumbersome structure would impose large compliance and adminis¬trative costs. In addition, unlike EU countries, where the VAT is the largest single source of tax revenue, the states of the United States already tax the VAT base with their sales taxes. The welfare costs of a VAT are substantial, and looking long term, its potential to generate revenue is limited by the negative effects it would have on economic growth. Projections show that adding a VAT of 3 percent to the current tax structure would reduce 2020 gross domestic product (GDP) to 2.1 percent below what it would be without the VAT. Meanwhile, total tax revenue would increase by 1.1 percent of GDP.
Good Intentions Gone Haywire
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/opinions-financial-reform-wall-street-dodd-frank-on-my-mind.html
Excerpt: The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act is supposed to shield consumers from problems in the financial services sector that many believe led to the financial meltdown. But Section 342 of the act introduces a brash example of social engineering that masquerades as consumer protection and financial reform. This section imposes gender and racial employment quotas on the financial services industry, which accounts for one-tenth of our economy. The quota provisions will affect over 50,000 financial services firms and other businesses, and the consequences will be enormous. Dodd-Frank requires at least 29 federal bureaus to open Offices of Minority & Women Inclusion, involving ten branches of the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and its 12 regional banks, the Securities & Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The new diversity offices will implement rules to ensure "the fair inclusion and utilization" of minorities and women in all firms doing business with each agency. The offices will terminate contracts with any service provider that fails to meet these as yet undetermined standards. Just running these offices is estimated to cost over $58 million annually, says David Patten in a recent story on Newsmax.com.
Ecuador troops rescue president from rebel cops
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093003217.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Excerpt: Ecuadorean soldiers firing automatic weapons and concussion grenades rescued President Rafael Correa late Thursday from a hospital where he was trapped most of the day by rebellious police who plunged the country into chaos in a protest over benefit cuts.
Pete Rouse, who will replace Emanuel as chief of staff, is known as 'fixer'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093007155.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Excerpt: Few people outside Washington, and not many inside, have heard the name Pete Rouse. The man President Obama will name as his interim White House chief of staff on Friday is a quiet political player who avoids the spotlight. He does not suit up for the Sunday talk shows; there are no stories about him reducing staff members to tears for their slip-ups.
Boehner: House rules make spending too easy, cuts difficult
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/121893-boehner-house-rules-make-spending-easy-cuts-difficult
Excerpt: House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) will say House budget rules should be reformed to curb federal spending in an address at a conservative think-tank Friday. The top-ranking House Republican will outline his suggested institutional reforms in a detailed speech at the American Enterprise Institute. The speech is intended to highlight how Boehner would run the House on budgetary issues as Speaker.
Gibbs: Dem hold 'sad' and 'outrageous'
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/121905-gibbs-calls-landrieus-lew-hold-sad-and-outrageous
Excerpt: White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Thursday called Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) procedural hold on President Obama's nominee for budget director sad and outrageous. Gibbs said it is a "sad day" when someone is held up when they have received bipartisan support in both the Senate Budget and Homeland Security panels.
Desperate Democrats Head for Home
Pelosi can see the election from her House. Amid the mortifying prospect of having to face the voters in one month, congressional Democrats voted to abandon ship and head for home. They hope to boost their poll numbers and stem the Republican tide, but their odds aren't good. The unfinished business they left won't help, either. The House vote to adjourn was 210-209, a cynically calculated margin that gave House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) the deciding vote. Vulnerable Democrats staged a minor revolt as 39 of them voted to stay in session in order to extend the Bush tax cuts, which are an issue, of course, because Democrats forced a sunset provision on them in 2001 and 2003. Democrats are willing to "sunset" tax cuts but not spending tax dollars on unconstitutional boondoggles. One imperiled Democrat, Rep. Zack Space (D-OH), said, "I think that small business, big business, individuals, have a right to expect some certainty. The longer we keep this [tax issue] open, the more uncertainty there is. Our economy is such that I don't think we can afford that. I just think we need to deal with this. That'd be the responsible thing." Forty-seven House Democrats signed on to a letter to Pelosi urging the extension of all the Bush tax cuts, and yet only 39 saw fit to vote against adjournment, thereby possibly letting them expire. Hmm. Of course, Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and other Democrats are too busy waging class warfare to care. As White House adviser David Axelrod spins it, Republicans are "going to have to explain to their constituents why they're holding up tax cuts for the middle class. And I think it's an untenable position to say, 'We're going to allow your taxes to go up on January 1st unless the president agrees to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.'" In truth, Democrats would rather taxes go up on everybody than to suffer the "rich" (i.e., small business owners) to keep what's theirs. Instead of addressing taxes and taking that back to their constituents, the Senate likewise voted to adjourn, and Congress will hold a two-week lame-duck session beginning Nov. 15. Before they fled the swamp, both chambers passed a stopgap measure to fund the government until Dec. 3. After all, with the fiscal year having started today, this fear-stricken Congress has yet to pass any of the 13 appropriations bills for 2011. Apparently, voter anger over skyrocketing deficits hasn't fallen on completely deaf ears. Democrats are prioritizing a series of leftist wish-list items they want to ram through in that lame-duck session, including repealing Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell, providing citizenry for American-born children of illegal immigrants, extending unemployment benefits (already at 99 weeks), continuing a freeze of cuts for doctors' Medicare reimbursement payments, etc. However, there's little chance that many of these items will see the light of the debate floor, considering that all of them failed at some stage already. Still, Democrats seem determined to go out in a blaze of glory. "The Patriot Post (www.patriotpost.us/subscribe/)
Changing the Malpractice System
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/changing-the-malpractice-system/
Balanced discussion. ~Bob. Excerpt: There are many reasons why we should overhaul our current malpractice system – perhaps even take it out of the tort system altogether and into alternative forms of dispute resolution that separate the issue of compensation for avoidable injury from professional fault. Ever so slightly bending down the cost curve may be one reason to take on the malpractice system. More important, in my view, would be to remove the threat of potentially demoralizing courtroom spectacles from the physician-patient relationship.
Is the Obama DOJ Committed to Race Neutral Law Enforcement?
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/10/01/morning-bell-is-the-obama-doj-committed-to-race-neutral-law-enforcement/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Excerpt: Finally, Gaziano pursued: “Let me ask my final question. If we uncovered strong evidence that a current supervising attorney or political appointee senior in your Division made statements that this administration will never bring a voting rights case or, to this effect, will never bring a voting rights case against blacks or other minorities, I hope that you will seriously investigate. And I hope you agree that it would be highly relevant to this investigation and that we should have access to the witnesses to such a statement.” Perez assured the Commission under oath: “If you have such a statement, bring such a statement to our attention.” The Commission has since twice produced evidence that both supervising appointees and political appointees at the Justice Department have made clear statements that it is the policy of the Obama Justice Department not to enforce our nation’s laws in a race-neutral manner.
The Day the Democrats Took Over
http://www.kenrisley.com/?p=531
Excerpt: The day the Democrats took over control of Congress was not January 22nd 2009, but two years earlier on January 3rd 2007. They took over the House of Representatives and the Senate, at the start of the 110th Congress. The Democratic Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995. This is when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House (2nd in line for the Presidency), and Harry Reid became Majority Leader of the Senate. For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is “Bush’s Fault”, think about this: At the time (January 3rd, 2007): The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77. The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%. The Unemployment rate was 4.6%. George Bush’s Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB CREATION! Remember the day…
Thinking the Unthinkable: The Islamists’ Manhattan Project
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/thinking-the-unthinkable-the-islamists%e2%80%99-manhattan-project/?singlepage=true
Excerpt At the beginning of this century, Americans believed in the world. Why wouldn’t we? The United States emerged from the Cold War as the planet’s sole economic and military superpower. We had shaped the globe’s institutions to our liking; they functioned under our captaincy. Then in 2001, our cities and people were attacked. The world displayed a month or two’s worth of empathy — since then, apathy. The organizations that anchor international rules have proven ineffective and corrupt. Nearly every American accepts this truism: the United Nations cannot prevent a nuclear 9/11. And that is what it’s all about, is it not? Though 9/11 was nine years ago, the act fundamentally restructured the American conception of internationalism. Colloquially, we say the attacks changed everything; in actuality, more was clarified than changed. The collapse of the World Trade Center did not make obsolete the timeless instruments of statecraft. International harmony and multilateral accords are good insofar as those who participate in these pursuits continue to adhere to the rules in which they are ground. As a foundation for peace and order, these concepts are merely sometimes necessary – but are always insufficient. Just as a prudent lawmaker would consider the legislation of morality a futile effort, so too those involved in foreign affairs ought to remind themselves that the attempted adjudication of human behavior is bound to fail without the credible threat of force. The liberal democracies that comprise the free world are precariously in error to assume their adversaries are as equally devoted to the perfection of man as they. The belief that all cultures are equal — all peoples alike and with similar desires — is nothing more than collective hope-think; it is the most dangerous kind of mirror-imaging. It is a great lie. In some quarters, the “enemy” has become an almost passé notion, where al-Qaeda killers are said to be misguided or politically immature — “a friend we haven’t done enough for yet,” in the words of philosopher Lee Harris. This therapeutic, post-modern worldview is prevalent in government and academia, and it directly undermines a society’s ability to interpret reality. (This certainly reflects my expectations. See especially the next to last paragraph. Ron P. The problem is that most Americans are coping with the possibility with a mixture of hoping for the best and denial. ~Bob.)
Schwarzenegger’s green dream for California
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/special-editorial-reports/SPECIAL-REPORT-Schwarzeneggers-green-dream-for-California-104108958.html#ixzz117ALLL00
[Part 5 of 5] Once again, proof that bad ideas can--and do--come from both parties. Ron P. Excerpt: Michaels pointed to his testimony on June 16 before the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, where he said: “Texas’ wind capacity is mostly far from load centers, and its power is priced by market bidding. As they compete for access to the constrained transmission lines, prices are bid to lower levels. In Texas, however, those prices are quite frequently becoming negative, 14 percent of all hours in 2008. ... “Gas marketer Bentek Energy examined a seeming paradox in Texas and Colorado: Operating data showed how wind’s variability meant that coal units had to make many quick output adjustments, and that those adjustments were responsible for the added pollution. “Bentek’s controversial conclusion was that the total load in the area could have been produced with lower total emissions had the wind units never existed.” If the California Legislature passes a new version of SB722 in December, Schwarzenegger could sign it into law by the time he leaves office. Or the next governor, either Democrat Jerry Brown or Republican Meg Whitman, could sign it next year. And if Schwarzenegger becomes energy czar under President Obama, as some have speculated, the forced use of inefficient renewables could be another California fad that spreads across the country, and the world.
Choked-up Emanuel leaves White House for Chicago mayoral bid
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/122091-choked-up-emanuel-leaves-white-house-for-chicago-mayoral-bid
Excerpt: An emotional Rahm Emanuel said goodbye Friday to the White House and President Obama, announcing his intention to explore a mayoral bid in Chicago.
NATO fuel tankers are torched in Pakistan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100102502.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline
Excerpt: Armed men torched dozens of NATO fuel tankers in southern Pakistan on Friday, police said, as supply convoys remained blocked at a vital entry point to Afghanistan for a second consecutive day. Police in the town of Shikarpur said 10 "extremists" shot and set fire to at least 30 NATO trucks stopped at a filling station, destroying the vehicles but injuring no one. Much of the fuel and other supplies bound for coalition forces in Afghanistan arrive at the southern port of Karachi, then are trucked north toward border points at Torkham or Chaman. In the southwestern province of Baluchistan, a truck driver and his assistant were burned to death in a second attack when armed militants stopped a NATO fuel tanker outside Quetta and opened fire on it, setting it ablaze, according to a Quetta-based official of the paramilitary Frontier Corps. He said the tanker was bound for the Chaman border crossing. (That “tiny minority of extremists” we hear about does get around. ~Bob)
Senate playing field shifts but GOP still poised for major gains
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/the-line/senate-playing-field-shifts.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics
Excerpt: The electoral plates are shifting in the battle for the Senate with two West Coast races moving toward Democrats while two East Coast contests shifting toward Republicans. In both California and Washington State, Democratic incumbents are on more solid political ground today than they were a few weeks ago -- the result of effective negative ads aimed at their opponents. But in open seat races in West Virginia and Connecticut, Democrats are showing a surprising amount of vulnerability as the national political environment seems to be complicating their path to victory.
Pakistan quietly aids drone attacks
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/30/pakistan-quietly-aids-drone-attacks/
Excerpt: Pakistani officials say privately that the U.S. keeps them informed on covert operations targeting terrorists on Pakistani soil and admit that the drones have been deadly, effective weapons in the war against terrorists. A Pakistani official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the militant-hunting operations, said the drones have been "extremely useful in eliminating the bad guys.” But the silent Pakistani support for such missions reached a breaking point Thursday after a NATO helicopter crossed over into Pakistani territory and allegedly killed three Pakistani soldiers. Islamabad retaliated by cutting off a vital supply line at Torkham for coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Health care overhaul is a lemon: Americans already can see it won't work
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/29/health-care-overhaul-is-a-lemon/
Excerpt: When will Obama administration officials realize that the more they talk about the health care law, the more people hate it? Six months after the passage of President Obama's 2,500-page health care law, the sales hype to help this monster gain popularity has come to sound increasingly like the pitch from a car salesman confronted with the truth that he's sold someone a lemon. Every complaint about Obamacare is met with rote repetition of talking points: "But it's really a beautiful car" or "Hey, let's not quibble over engine trouble. Take a look at that chrome." The law's supporters even have invoked the Divine to help their so-called "reform" gain traction with the American public, all to no avail. Majority support for Obamacare remains a dream, which won't surprise anyone following the headlines across America touting huge premium increases, small-business tax increases and insurance companies just dropping plans altogether. The sad tale of health care in Massachusetts - the template for Obamacare - reveals the future of federal reform. More than four years into an insurance overhaul touted by former Gov. Mitt Romney and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber in the Wall Street Journal as a health care solution, costs to businesses are skyrocketing. One small-business owner summed it up in a word: "insane." Jobs are being lost as companies downsize, outsource and cut back simply to comply with the mandates placed upon businesses by the law. Premium increases are, in some cases, exceeding 3O percent just for next year alone, a full three years before the individual mandate kicks in. (Another sharp whack at ObamaCare. We have friends and relatives in Massachusetts, and the health care plan there is closely related to the ObamaCare package. (Actually, it's better in that it doesn't have all the stupid extraneous stuff in it that those 2500+ pages from Congress do.) And the MA plan has been sliding into trouble steadily since the first year it was implemented. The list of problems with it just keeps growing; it hasn't broken down very badly yet, but it's headed in that direction, and how it's going to continue to get funded is a question for which so far there is no good answer. So we already have the equivalent of the canary in the coal mine to examine.... and the canary has already started slipping fast off its perch. Just think how much worse ObamaCare will work out. --Del)
Netherlands to ban the burqa, says anti-Islam MPs
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5huD6axWcTLNFprsaDk41Yf3npNVg?docId=CNG.eca89f5bc88800f85f46c6df5cbe0017.01
Excerpt: The Netherlands will ban the burqa and halve immigration under measures agreed in a pact to form a minority coalition government, anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders announced Thursday. "A new wind will blow in The Netherlands," declared Wilders whose party is part of the deal, standing alongside the leaders of the pro-business VVD party and the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) that will form the minority government. "There will... be a burqa ban," said the controversial politician, who is to go on trial in Amsterdam next Monday for inciting hatred against Muslims, adding that there would also be 50 percent reduction in immigration. "We want the Islamisation to be stopped," he said, speaking in The Hague as measures in the agreement were announced. Wilders -- who campaigns for a ban on Muslim immigration and wants to end the building of new mosques and tax Muslim head scarves -- had a say in the plan's immigration policies in return for supporting its austerity measures.
Who’s Anti-Intellectual?
http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/248408/whos-anti-intellectual-david-french
See article above. ~Bob. Excerpt: Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education, English professor William Pannapacker has written an essay called “Why Do They Hate Us?” exploring the roots of popular rage against academics. It’s a thoughtful essay and worth a careful read, but I’d like to focus on his first explanation for the “hate”: “Anti-intellectualism and populism. Those tendencies in American life are not new, but they have become more virulent (see parts one and two of my column “On Stupidity”). Traditionally, professors have countered the tendency toward simplistic, slogan-based thinking — and manipulation — by teaching students to evaluate sources and reach their own conclusions on the basis of evidence derived from painstaking research. The notion that knowledge is always political, and that perspectives are always relative, has eroded the belief in expertise and earned authority. If everyone’s biased, including professors, why not just “go with your gut”? It’s much easier, and it empowers you against the academics whose admonitions — as we have lost influence — have become increasingly condescending, sanctimonious, and shrill.” I think he’s on to something, but the anti-intellectualism often comes not from the public but from the academy itself. When he decries the “notion that knowledge is always political, and that perspectives are always relative,” where does he think the public would get such an idea? In fact, I’d say that sums up the state of argument in the academy much more than it does in the outside world. In an era of politicized hiring, speech codes, and ideological monocultures, it’s easy to conclude that the academy is dedicated more to “manipulation” than to reaching conclusions “on the basis of evidence derived from painstaking research.” Professor Pannapacker is correct that professors “have become increasingly condescending, sanctimonious, and shrill” because they shut down the marketplace of ideas on campus. Large segments of the population are hungry for knowledge, but less hungry for the postmodern, race/gender deconstruction that dominates much of academic thought. What’s more anti-intellectual? Reading (or writing) one more screed against the patriarchy or reading seminal economic texts? The much-maligned Glenn Beck and his much-maligned audience have demonstrated more hunger for knowledge than many academics. He asks his audience to read serious works, and he recently blasted The Road to Serfdom back to No. 1 on the Amazon charts.
Sweden’s Quiet Revolution
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/248263/sweden’s-quiet-revolution-duncan-currie
Excerpt: There is something about Sweden that provokes a mix of envy, horror, and bewilderment among American observers. Liberals have traditionally celebrated its cradle-to-grave safety net, while conservatives have disparaged its high taxes and centralized health-care regime. Yet both groups have generally agreed that Swedish-style socialism is a far cry from rough-and-tumble U.S. capitalism. In fact, contemporary Sweden is much less socialist than many Americans realize. Since the early 1990s, when it suffered a painful financial crisis, the Scandinavian country has deregulated key industries (such as airlines, telecommunications, and electricity), lowered its overall tax burden, established universal school vouchers, partially privatized its pension system, abolished certain government monopolies, sold a number of state-owned enterprises (including the parent company of Absolut vodka), and trimmed public spending. Several years ago, it eliminated gift and inheritance taxes. The World Economic Forum now ranks Sweden as the second-most competitive economy on earth, behind only Switzerland. According to the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom (compiled by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation), Sweden offers greater business freedom, trade freedom, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, freedom from corruption, and property-rights protection than does the United States.
“No” Vote, for Tax Vote
http://taxbitesandtastymorsels.com/?p=595
Good blog. ~Bob. Excerpt: So, why do we taxpayers employ members of Congress again? It seems the only things they do get done, we don’t need, and the things we do need, they don’t get done. A vote on the fate of the Bush Tax cuts is the single most important issue for our economy today, and in her final act late last night before the House was to adjourn for the month of October, Nancy Pelosi cast the tie-breaking vote, not to vote on the issue. In the 210 to 209 decision, many Democrats dared to defy Madame Speaker, because they have heard the citizens of this country, who demand and deserve an answer on the impending tax situation. These representatives were clearly unhappy with the actions of the Speaker and strongly voiced their opinions after the vote. On November 2, the electorate will likely make its voice heard as well … at the voting booth. And, with any mercy at all, we will be spared the recurring nightmare of Pelosi beating the gavel come the new year. A recent study by the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, Obama Tax Hikes: The Economic and Fiscal Effects, found that the Obama Tax hikes would destroy an average of 693,000 jobs every year through 2020; drain $726 billion from disposable income, $38 billion from personal savings and $33 billion from business investments; raise taxes on the 55 percent of all joint filers earning more than $250,000 who run small businesses; and cost nonfarm small businesses and seniors significantly higher taxes. Much of the tax increase on seniors would come from increased taxes on dividends, which is a primary source of income for many seniors.
Worth Reading: Why Is He Sending Them?
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/charles-krauthammer/2010/10/01/why-is-he-sending-them/
Excerpt: From the beginning, the call to arms was highly uncertain. On Dec. 1, 2009, commander in chief Barack Obama orders 30,000 more Americans into battle in Afghanistan. But in the very next sentence, he announces that an American withdrawal will begin after 18 months. Astonishing. A surge of troops -- overall, Obama has tripled our Afghan force -- with a declaration not of war but of ambivalence. Nine months later, Marine Corps Commandant James Conway admitted that this decision was "probably giving our enemy sustenance." This wasn't conjecture, he insisted, but the stuff of intercepted Taliban communications testifying to their relief that they simply had to wait out the Americans. What kind of commander in chief sends tens of thousands of troops to war announcing in advance a fixed date for beginning their withdrawal? One who doesn't have his heart in it. One who doesn't really want to win but is making some kind of political gesture. One who thinks he has to be seen as trying but is preparing the ground -- meaning, the political cover -- for failure. Until now, the above was just inference from the president's public rhetoric. No longer. Now we have the private quotes. Bob Woodward's book, drawing on classified memos and interviews with scores of national security officials, has Obama telling his advisers: "I want an exit strategy." He tells the country publicly that Afghanistan is a "vital national interest," but he tells his generals that he will not do the kind of patient institution-building that is the very essence of the counterinsurgency strategy that Gens. McChrystal and Petraeus crafted and that he -- Obama -- adopted. Moreover, he must find an exit because "I can't lose the whole Democratic Party." This admission is the most crushing of all. First, isn't this the party that in two consecutive presidential campaigns -- John Kerry's and then Obama's -- argued vociferously that Afghanistan is the good war, the right war, the war of necessity, the central front in the war on terror? Now, after acceding to power and being given charge of that very war, Obama confides that he must retreat lest that very same party abandon him. What happened in the interim? Did it suddenly develop a faint heart? Or was the party disingenuous about the Afghan War all along, using it as a convenient club with which to attack George W. Bush over Iraq, while protecting Democrats from the charge of being reflexively anti-war? Whatever the reason, is it not Obama's job as president and party leader to bring the party with him? This is the man who made Berlin coo, America swoon and the Nobel committee lose its mind. Yet he cannot get his own party to follow him on what he insists is a matter of vital national interest? (The troops serve and fight and bleed and die because they are better men—and now women too—than the man ordering them to battle. But that is not new. ~Bob)
Excellent column: From the Unbelievable to the Passé
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/from-the-unbelievable-to-the-passe/?singlepage=true
Excerpt: Everywhere one looks statism is a failure. Contrast resource-rich Venezuela with Chile. Juxtapose Cuba to Colombia. Of course, compare Dark Age North Korea with the 21st-century South. Look at the UK in 1954 and 1990. They are rioting in Europe not to embrace socialism, but in petulant fashion to find someone somehow to pay for it — as if “they” and “them” are partying in some remote Aegean island, with vaults of stashed euros. Whether hard communism or soft socialism, statism does not work. We all know why — it goes against human nature, rewarding mediocrity and punishing merit, professing egalitarianism for the masses, while the operators of the system, whether the old Soviet apparatchiks or the new crony EU Brussels bureaucrats, satisfy their appetites like capitalists. Ultimately, it is simply like coasting on a bike uphill. The last hard peddles are simply not enough to push the bike and rider over the hill: finally the brilliant small manufacturer, the lean contractor, the enterprising farmer, the late-into-the-night engineer — they cannot carry any longer the clerk, the auditor, the regulator, the tax man, and the bureaucrat who wish not merely to piggy-back onto the biker, but to try to stop his peddling even as they demand to get over the crest. (Going one-up on Lewis Caroll, here are 4 unbelievable things before breakfast. Ron P.)
Barbara Boxer Campaigners hire day laborers to hold protest signs against Carly Fiorina
http://www.breitbart.tv/boxer-campaigners-hire-day-laborers-to-protest-fiorina/
No word on their citizenship.
Sea Turtle extinction: not global warming
http://ticotimes.com/costa-rica/sea-turtle-extinction-stealing-eggs
Click through the pics. Pretty bad—but poor people gotta eat. We can’t have trade with them so they’d have jobs, ticks off the Unions and Democrats. ~Bob.
Obama's Campaign-Season Christianity
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/09/30/obamas-campaign-season-christi
Excerpt: Barack Obama threw his mom under the parish van on Tuesday, describing her as formlessly "spiritual" while casting himself as the self-made convert. "I am a Christian by choice," he said at a campaign event in New Mexico this week. In 2007, he said the opposite: that he became a Christian through his mother. "My mother was a Christian from Kansas…I was raised by my mother. So, I've always been a Christian," he told a voter who had inquired about his Islamic background. The woman at the campaign stop in New Mexico on Tuesday asked him to explain why he is a Christian and coupled it with another one about his support for abortion rights. The sequence of questions proved awkward, with the answer to the latter question rendering his answer to the first one meaningless."[The] precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead—being my brothers' and sisters' keeper, treating others as they would treat me," he said. He threw in a few more vague-sounding clichés and a paean to religious relativism for good measure, and reassured the lady that "I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith." (I think like many he is a secular humanist who believes in the state and the power of government to fix people. I don’t think he’s a Muslim or a Christian, except as convenient. ~Bob.)
Why do They Hate Us
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Do-They-Hate-Us-/124608/
Excerpt: I am only a decade out of graduate school—and I suppose it's possible that I am a disagreeable person—but I have had more than a few unpleasant conversations with complete strangers, and even some friends, in which they have expressed their anger about professors while knowing that I am one. (Here is an interesting article, containing some valid points. It is, in my opinion, missing two important things, one of which is that the antics of a few professors (e.g. Ward Churchill) demonstrate such arrogance and political extremism that they arouse real anger amongst the majority of Americans, and some of that spills over into suspicion of professors in general. The other factor is the generally liberal slant/Political Correctness of a significant fraction of professors, which again rubs very many Americans the wrong way. A recent example was the almost immediate condemnation of the Duke LaCrosse team accused of rape, in a letter signed by 80 faculty members, well before a thorough examination of the facts had begun; and when it turned out the accusation was false, there was no hint of apology from those same professors. We've had professors say that of 9-11 "we had it coming," or teach that it was the CIA/Mossad who really directed those planes, and we've had cases where professors gave poor marks to students whose essays on some assigned topic reached conclusions contrary to the professor's personal opinion on the topic. However exceptional such behaviors may be, they receive a good deal of publicity, and surely influence people's feelings, perhaps as much or more than what the writer below discusses. Any other thoughts on this? –Del read a book on this by a professor back in the 1970s called “This Beats Working for a Living.” ~Bob.)
Why Dems Are Going Down in November
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0910/ahlert.php3
Unless something totally unforeseen occurs, Democrats are poised to take a real beating in November. Their response to the impending disaster has run the gamut. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is in denial: "One thing I know for sure is that Democrats will retain their majority in the House of Representatives." Massachusetts Senator John Kerry is condescending: "We have an electorate that doesn't always pay that much attention to what's going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what's happening." President Obama is angry: "It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election." Why is the electorate ready to kick Democrats to the curb? Here's why:…… All of it centers around the ridiculous premise that America owes the world an apology for any number of shortcomings, many of which can only be alleviated by government-mandated "social justice." That would be the same social justice which demanded—and still demands—that Americans manifestly unqualified to own homes be given mortgages, regardless. Unknown to the majority of Americans, this precise mindset was part of the financial "reform" bill which also requires banks to lend a certain percentage of capital to minority-owned businesses, even if it means lowering their lending standards. Apparently progressives won't be satisfied with their odious social-engineering schemes until every sector of the American economy bears a striking resemblance to the housing sector. So far, Americans support financial reform because it's been framed as "Main Street versus "Wall Street." It's not. Like every other initiative undertaken by this Congress and this administration, it's the elevation of irresponsible and dishonest Americans over those willing to accept the consequences of their own behavior. There you have it. Democratic control for four years in Congress, and two in the White House has been exactly what many predicted: an ideologically-driven disaster of epic proportions.
British brothers 'behind Mumbai-style plot'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8035596/British-brothers-behind-Mumbai-style-plot.html
Didn’t get the memo. ~Bob. Excerpt: Two British brothers are said to be “at the heart” of an al-Qaeda plot to launch Mumbai-style terrorist attacks on the West. Intelligence sources say the pair are part of a 10-strong team who were planning to launch shooting sprees on cities in Britain, France and Germany. A Pakistani intelligence official, who is part of a team that has been tracking militants, said that they had been watching the two British brothers for nearly a year. In recent weeks the men had been in telephone contact with London as they sought help in securing weapons and preparing the plot.
Spain on strike: riot police and protesters clash during a nationwide general strike
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/8032557/Spain-on-strike-riot-police-and-protesters-clash-during-a-nationwide-general-strike.html
Don’t laugh. This is what happens when the money for entitlements runs out. ~Bob. Excerpt: Police break up a picket line that had entered a shop during a nationwide strike in Santiago de Compostela, northern Spain.
Deconstructing the Latest Health Care Fad: Accountable Care Organizations
http://www.heartland.org/healthpolicy-news.org/article/28449/Deconstructing_the_Latest_Health_Care_Fad_Accountable_Care_Organizations.html
Excerpt: The President’s health care reform bill includes numerous pilot projects and demonstration programs designed to test ways of lowering health care spending and improving quality. One such pilot program is Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), the latest fad among health policy wonks. Backers expect ACOs to raise the quality and lower the cost of patient care simultaneously. Detractors, on the other hand, describe them as “HMOs on steroids.” What’s the truth?
The Value Added Tax: Too Costly for the United States
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19880&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Excerpt: The United States is unusual in not having a valued-added tax (VAT), which is one reason the possible adop¬tion of a VAT has been a longstanding debate in U.S. tax policy, says Randall G. Holcombe, professor of economics at Florida State University. Most developed economies rely on a VAT for a substantial share of their tax revenue, so it is natural for the United States to look at the possibility of implementing a VAT, especially while huge budget deficits are forecast as far out as the forecasts go. While one can debate the merits of a VAT in other countries, the tax is not a good fit for the United States for many reasons, says Holcombe. A VAT would tax a base that has traditionally belonged to state governments. Its introduction would bring with it intergenerational inequities and slow economic growth. Its cumbersome structure would impose large compliance and adminis¬trative costs. In addition, unlike EU countries, where the VAT is the largest single source of tax revenue, the states of the United States already tax the VAT base with their sales taxes. The welfare costs of a VAT are substantial, and looking long term, its potential to generate revenue is limited by the negative effects it would have on economic growth. Projections show that adding a VAT of 3 percent to the current tax structure would reduce 2020 gross domestic product (GDP) to 2.1 percent below what it would be without the VAT. Meanwhile, total tax revenue would increase by 1.1 percent of GDP.
Good Intentions Gone Haywire
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/opinions-financial-reform-wall-street-dodd-frank-on-my-mind.html
Excerpt: The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act is supposed to shield consumers from problems in the financial services sector that many believe led to the financial meltdown. But Section 342 of the act introduces a brash example of social engineering that masquerades as consumer protection and financial reform. This section imposes gender and racial employment quotas on the financial services industry, which accounts for one-tenth of our economy. The quota provisions will affect over 50,000 financial services firms and other businesses, and the consequences will be enormous. Dodd-Frank requires at least 29 federal bureaus to open Offices of Minority & Women Inclusion, involving ten branches of the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and its 12 regional banks, the Securities & Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The new diversity offices will implement rules to ensure "the fair inclusion and utilization" of minorities and women in all firms doing business with each agency. The offices will terminate contracts with any service provider that fails to meet these as yet undetermined standards. Just running these offices is estimated to cost over $58 million annually, says David Patten in a recent story on Newsmax.com.
Ecuador troops rescue president from rebel cops
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093003217.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Excerpt: Ecuadorean soldiers firing automatic weapons and concussion grenades rescued President Rafael Correa late Thursday from a hospital where he was trapped most of the day by rebellious police who plunged the country into chaos in a protest over benefit cuts.
Pete Rouse, who will replace Emanuel as chief of staff, is known as 'fixer'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093007155.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Excerpt: Few people outside Washington, and not many inside, have heard the name Pete Rouse. The man President Obama will name as his interim White House chief of staff on Friday is a quiet political player who avoids the spotlight. He does not suit up for the Sunday talk shows; there are no stories about him reducing staff members to tears for their slip-ups.
Boehner: House rules make spending too easy, cuts difficult
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/121893-boehner-house-rules-make-spending-easy-cuts-difficult
Excerpt: House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) will say House budget rules should be reformed to curb federal spending in an address at a conservative think-tank Friday. The top-ranking House Republican will outline his suggested institutional reforms in a detailed speech at the American Enterprise Institute. The speech is intended to highlight how Boehner would run the House on budgetary issues as Speaker.
Gibbs: Dem hold 'sad' and 'outrageous'
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/121905-gibbs-calls-landrieus-lew-hold-sad-and-outrageous
Excerpt: White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Thursday called Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) procedural hold on President Obama's nominee for budget director sad and outrageous. Gibbs said it is a "sad day" when someone is held up when they have received bipartisan support in both the Senate Budget and Homeland Security panels.
Desperate Democrats Head for Home
Pelosi can see the election from her House. Amid the mortifying prospect of having to face the voters in one month, congressional Democrats voted to abandon ship and head for home. They hope to boost their poll numbers and stem the Republican tide, but their odds aren't good. The unfinished business they left won't help, either. The House vote to adjourn was 210-209, a cynically calculated margin that gave House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) the deciding vote. Vulnerable Democrats staged a minor revolt as 39 of them voted to stay in session in order to extend the Bush tax cuts, which are an issue, of course, because Democrats forced a sunset provision on them in 2001 and 2003. Democrats are willing to "sunset" tax cuts but not spending tax dollars on unconstitutional boondoggles. One imperiled Democrat, Rep. Zack Space (D-OH), said, "I think that small business, big business, individuals, have a right to expect some certainty. The longer we keep this [tax issue] open, the more uncertainty there is. Our economy is such that I don't think we can afford that. I just think we need to deal with this. That'd be the responsible thing." Forty-seven House Democrats signed on to a letter to Pelosi urging the extension of all the Bush tax cuts, and yet only 39 saw fit to vote against adjournment, thereby possibly letting them expire. Hmm. Of course, Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and other Democrats are too busy waging class warfare to care. As White House adviser David Axelrod spins it, Republicans are "going to have to explain to their constituents why they're holding up tax cuts for the middle class. And I think it's an untenable position to say, 'We're going to allow your taxes to go up on January 1st unless the president agrees to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.'" In truth, Democrats would rather taxes go up on everybody than to suffer the "rich" (i.e., small business owners) to keep what's theirs. Instead of addressing taxes and taking that back to their constituents, the Senate likewise voted to adjourn, and Congress will hold a two-week lame-duck session beginning Nov. 15. Before they fled the swamp, both chambers passed a stopgap measure to fund the government until Dec. 3. After all, with the fiscal year having started today, this fear-stricken Congress has yet to pass any of the 13 appropriations bills for 2011. Apparently, voter anger over skyrocketing deficits hasn't fallen on completely deaf ears. Democrats are prioritizing a series of leftist wish-list items they want to ram through in that lame-duck session, including repealing Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell, providing citizenry for American-born children of illegal immigrants, extending unemployment benefits (already at 99 weeks), continuing a freeze of cuts for doctors' Medicare reimbursement payments, etc. However, there's little chance that many of these items will see the light of the debate floor, considering that all of them failed at some stage already. Still, Democrats seem determined to go out in a blaze of glory. "The Patriot Post (www.patriotpost.us/subscribe/)
Changing the Malpractice System
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/changing-the-malpractice-system/
Balanced discussion. ~Bob. Excerpt: There are many reasons why we should overhaul our current malpractice system – perhaps even take it out of the tort system altogether and into alternative forms of dispute resolution that separate the issue of compensation for avoidable injury from professional fault. Ever so slightly bending down the cost curve may be one reason to take on the malpractice system. More important, in my view, would be to remove the threat of potentially demoralizing courtroom spectacles from the physician-patient relationship.
Is the Obama DOJ Committed to Race Neutral Law Enforcement?
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/10/01/morning-bell-is-the-obama-doj-committed-to-race-neutral-law-enforcement/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Excerpt: Finally, Gaziano pursued: “Let me ask my final question. If we uncovered strong evidence that a current supervising attorney or political appointee senior in your Division made statements that this administration will never bring a voting rights case or, to this effect, will never bring a voting rights case against blacks or other minorities, I hope that you will seriously investigate. And I hope you agree that it would be highly relevant to this investigation and that we should have access to the witnesses to such a statement.” Perez assured the Commission under oath: “If you have such a statement, bring such a statement to our attention.” The Commission has since twice produced evidence that both supervising appointees and political appointees at the Justice Department have made clear statements that it is the policy of the Obama Justice Department not to enforce our nation’s laws in a race-neutral manner.
The Day the Democrats Took Over
http://www.kenrisley.com/?p=531
Excerpt: The day the Democrats took over control of Congress was not January 22nd 2009, but two years earlier on January 3rd 2007. They took over the House of Representatives and the Senate, at the start of the 110th Congress. The Democratic Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995. This is when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House (2nd in line for the Presidency), and Harry Reid became Majority Leader of the Senate. For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is “Bush’s Fault”, think about this: At the time (January 3rd, 2007): The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77. The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%. The Unemployment rate was 4.6%. George Bush’s Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB CREATION! Remember the day…
Thinking the Unthinkable: The Islamists’ Manhattan Project
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/thinking-the-unthinkable-the-islamists%e2%80%99-manhattan-project/?singlepage=true
Excerpt At the beginning of this century, Americans believed in the world. Why wouldn’t we? The United States emerged from the Cold War as the planet’s sole economic and military superpower. We had shaped the globe’s institutions to our liking; they functioned under our captaincy. Then in 2001, our cities and people were attacked. The world displayed a month or two’s worth of empathy — since then, apathy. The organizations that anchor international rules have proven ineffective and corrupt. Nearly every American accepts this truism: the United Nations cannot prevent a nuclear 9/11. And that is what it’s all about, is it not? Though 9/11 was nine years ago, the act fundamentally restructured the American conception of internationalism. Colloquially, we say the attacks changed everything; in actuality, more was clarified than changed. The collapse of the World Trade Center did not make obsolete the timeless instruments of statecraft. International harmony and multilateral accords are good insofar as those who participate in these pursuits continue to adhere to the rules in which they are ground. As a foundation for peace and order, these concepts are merely sometimes necessary – but are always insufficient. Just as a prudent lawmaker would consider the legislation of morality a futile effort, so too those involved in foreign affairs ought to remind themselves that the attempted adjudication of human behavior is bound to fail without the credible threat of force. The liberal democracies that comprise the free world are precariously in error to assume their adversaries are as equally devoted to the perfection of man as they. The belief that all cultures are equal — all peoples alike and with similar desires — is nothing more than collective hope-think; it is the most dangerous kind of mirror-imaging. It is a great lie. In some quarters, the “enemy” has become an almost passé notion, where al-Qaeda killers are said to be misguided or politically immature — “a friend we haven’t done enough for yet,” in the words of philosopher Lee Harris. This therapeutic, post-modern worldview is prevalent in government and academia, and it directly undermines a society’s ability to interpret reality. (This certainly reflects my expectations. See especially the next to last paragraph. Ron P. The problem is that most Americans are coping with the possibility with a mixture of hoping for the best and denial. ~Bob.)
Schwarzenegger’s green dream for California
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/special-editorial-reports/SPECIAL-REPORT-Schwarzeneggers-green-dream-for-California-104108958.html#ixzz117ALLL00
[Part 5 of 5] Once again, proof that bad ideas can--and do--come from both parties. Ron P. Excerpt: Michaels pointed to his testimony on June 16 before the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, where he said: “Texas’ wind capacity is mostly far from load centers, and its power is priced by market bidding. As they compete for access to the constrained transmission lines, prices are bid to lower levels. In Texas, however, those prices are quite frequently becoming negative, 14 percent of all hours in 2008. ... “Gas marketer Bentek Energy examined a seeming paradox in Texas and Colorado: Operating data showed how wind’s variability meant that coal units had to make many quick output adjustments, and that those adjustments were responsible for the added pollution. “Bentek’s controversial conclusion was that the total load in the area could have been produced with lower total emissions had the wind units never existed.” If the California Legislature passes a new version of SB722 in December, Schwarzenegger could sign it into law by the time he leaves office. Or the next governor, either Democrat Jerry Brown or Republican Meg Whitman, could sign it next year. And if Schwarzenegger becomes energy czar under President Obama, as some have speculated, the forced use of inefficient renewables could be another California fad that spreads across the country, and the world.
Choked-up Emanuel leaves White House for Chicago mayoral bid
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/122091-choked-up-emanuel-leaves-white-house-for-chicago-mayoral-bid
Excerpt: An emotional Rahm Emanuel said goodbye Friday to the White House and President Obama, announcing his intention to explore a mayoral bid in Chicago.
NATO fuel tankers are torched in Pakistan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100102502.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline
Excerpt: Armed men torched dozens of NATO fuel tankers in southern Pakistan on Friday, police said, as supply convoys remained blocked at a vital entry point to Afghanistan for a second consecutive day. Police in the town of Shikarpur said 10 "extremists" shot and set fire to at least 30 NATO trucks stopped at a filling station, destroying the vehicles but injuring no one. Much of the fuel and other supplies bound for coalition forces in Afghanistan arrive at the southern port of Karachi, then are trucked north toward border points at Torkham or Chaman. In the southwestern province of Baluchistan, a truck driver and his assistant were burned to death in a second attack when armed militants stopped a NATO fuel tanker outside Quetta and opened fire on it, setting it ablaze, according to a Quetta-based official of the paramilitary Frontier Corps. He said the tanker was bound for the Chaman border crossing. (That “tiny minority of extremists” we hear about does get around. ~Bob)
Senate playing field shifts but GOP still poised for major gains
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/the-line/senate-playing-field-shifts.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics
Excerpt: The electoral plates are shifting in the battle for the Senate with two West Coast races moving toward Democrats while two East Coast contests shifting toward Republicans. In both California and Washington State, Democratic incumbents are on more solid political ground today than they were a few weeks ago -- the result of effective negative ads aimed at their opponents. But in open seat races in West Virginia and Connecticut, Democrats are showing a surprising amount of vulnerability as the national political environment seems to be complicating their path to victory.
Pakistan quietly aids drone attacks
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/30/pakistan-quietly-aids-drone-attacks/
Excerpt: Pakistani officials say privately that the U.S. keeps them informed on covert operations targeting terrorists on Pakistani soil and admit that the drones have been deadly, effective weapons in the war against terrorists. A Pakistani official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the militant-hunting operations, said the drones have been "extremely useful in eliminating the bad guys.” But the silent Pakistani support for such missions reached a breaking point Thursday after a NATO helicopter crossed over into Pakistani territory and allegedly killed three Pakistani soldiers. Islamabad retaliated by cutting off a vital supply line at Torkham for coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Health care overhaul is a lemon: Americans already can see it won't work
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/29/health-care-overhaul-is-a-lemon/
Excerpt: When will Obama administration officials realize that the more they talk about the health care law, the more people hate it? Six months after the passage of President Obama's 2,500-page health care law, the sales hype to help this monster gain popularity has come to sound increasingly like the pitch from a car salesman confronted with the truth that he's sold someone a lemon. Every complaint about Obamacare is met with rote repetition of talking points: "But it's really a beautiful car" or "Hey, let's not quibble over engine trouble. Take a look at that chrome." The law's supporters even have invoked the Divine to help their so-called "reform" gain traction with the American public, all to no avail. Majority support for Obamacare remains a dream, which won't surprise anyone following the headlines across America touting huge premium increases, small-business tax increases and insurance companies just dropping plans altogether. The sad tale of health care in Massachusetts - the template for Obamacare - reveals the future of federal reform. More than four years into an insurance overhaul touted by former Gov. Mitt Romney and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber in the Wall Street Journal as a health care solution, costs to businesses are skyrocketing. One small-business owner summed it up in a word: "insane." Jobs are being lost as companies downsize, outsource and cut back simply to comply with the mandates placed upon businesses by the law. Premium increases are, in some cases, exceeding 3O percent just for next year alone, a full three years before the individual mandate kicks in. (Another sharp whack at ObamaCare. We have friends and relatives in Massachusetts, and the health care plan there is closely related to the ObamaCare package. (Actually, it's better in that it doesn't have all the stupid extraneous stuff in it that those 2500+ pages from Congress do.) And the MA plan has been sliding into trouble steadily since the first year it was implemented. The list of problems with it just keeps growing; it hasn't broken down very badly yet, but it's headed in that direction, and how it's going to continue to get funded is a question for which so far there is no good answer. So we already have the equivalent of the canary in the coal mine to examine.... and the canary has already started slipping fast off its perch. Just think how much worse ObamaCare will work out. --Del)
Netherlands to ban the burqa, says anti-Islam MPs
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5huD6axWcTLNFprsaDk41Yf3npNVg?docId=CNG.eca89f5bc88800f85f46c6df5cbe0017.01
Excerpt: The Netherlands will ban the burqa and halve immigration under measures agreed in a pact to form a minority coalition government, anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders announced Thursday. "A new wind will blow in The Netherlands," declared Wilders whose party is part of the deal, standing alongside the leaders of the pro-business VVD party and the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) that will form the minority government. "There will... be a burqa ban," said the controversial politician, who is to go on trial in Amsterdam next Monday for inciting hatred against Muslims, adding that there would also be 50 percent reduction in immigration. "We want the Islamisation to be stopped," he said, speaking in The Hague as measures in the agreement were announced. Wilders -- who campaigns for a ban on Muslim immigration and wants to end the building of new mosques and tax Muslim head scarves -- had a say in the plan's immigration policies in return for supporting its austerity measures.
Who’s Anti-Intellectual?
http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/248408/whos-anti-intellectual-david-french
See article above. ~Bob. Excerpt: Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education, English professor William Pannapacker has written an essay called “Why Do They Hate Us?” exploring the roots of popular rage against academics. It’s a thoughtful essay and worth a careful read, but I’d like to focus on his first explanation for the “hate”: “Anti-intellectualism and populism. Those tendencies in American life are not new, but they have become more virulent (see parts one and two of my column “On Stupidity”). Traditionally, professors have countered the tendency toward simplistic, slogan-based thinking — and manipulation — by teaching students to evaluate sources and reach their own conclusions on the basis of evidence derived from painstaking research. The notion that knowledge is always political, and that perspectives are always relative, has eroded the belief in expertise and earned authority. If everyone’s biased, including professors, why not just “go with your gut”? It’s much easier, and it empowers you against the academics whose admonitions — as we have lost influence — have become increasingly condescending, sanctimonious, and shrill.” I think he’s on to something, but the anti-intellectualism often comes not from the public but from the academy itself. When he decries the “notion that knowledge is always political, and that perspectives are always relative,” where does he think the public would get such an idea? In fact, I’d say that sums up the state of argument in the academy much more than it does in the outside world. In an era of politicized hiring, speech codes, and ideological monocultures, it’s easy to conclude that the academy is dedicated more to “manipulation” than to reaching conclusions “on the basis of evidence derived from painstaking research.” Professor Pannapacker is correct that professors “have become increasingly condescending, sanctimonious, and shrill” because they shut down the marketplace of ideas on campus. Large segments of the population are hungry for knowledge, but less hungry for the postmodern, race/gender deconstruction that dominates much of academic thought. What’s more anti-intellectual? Reading (or writing) one more screed against the patriarchy or reading seminal economic texts? The much-maligned Glenn Beck and his much-maligned audience have demonstrated more hunger for knowledge than many academics. He asks his audience to read serious works, and he recently blasted The Road to Serfdom back to No. 1 on the Amazon charts.
Sweden’s Quiet Revolution
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/248263/sweden’s-quiet-revolution-duncan-currie
Excerpt: There is something about Sweden that provokes a mix of envy, horror, and bewilderment among American observers. Liberals have traditionally celebrated its cradle-to-grave safety net, while conservatives have disparaged its high taxes and centralized health-care regime. Yet both groups have generally agreed that Swedish-style socialism is a far cry from rough-and-tumble U.S. capitalism. In fact, contemporary Sweden is much less socialist than many Americans realize. Since the early 1990s, when it suffered a painful financial crisis, the Scandinavian country has deregulated key industries (such as airlines, telecommunications, and electricity), lowered its overall tax burden, established universal school vouchers, partially privatized its pension system, abolished certain government monopolies, sold a number of state-owned enterprises (including the parent company of Absolut vodka), and trimmed public spending. Several years ago, it eliminated gift and inheritance taxes. The World Economic Forum now ranks Sweden as the second-most competitive economy on earth, behind only Switzerland. According to the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom (compiled by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation), Sweden offers greater business freedom, trade freedom, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, freedom from corruption, and property-rights protection than does the United States.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Comcast Update
My recent post on Comcast charging us for fixing their bad line drew this response:
ComcastCares1 has left a new comment on your post "Concast charges when their line goes bad":
I work for Comcast. I'll reach out to my contacts to see what we can do with the fee. You can contact me (include account info and link to this page) if you're interested in my help.
Mark Casem
Comcast Corp.
National Customer Operations
We_can_help@cable.comcast.com
And my e-mail to their address...bounced. Typical.
ComcastCares1 has left a new comment on your post "Concast charges when their line goes bad":
I work for Comcast. I'll reach out to my contacts to see what we can do with the fee. You can contact me (include account info and link to this page) if you're interested in my help.
Mark Casem
Comcast Corp.
National Customer Operations
We_can_help@cable.comcast.com
And my e-mail to their address...bounced. Typical.
Political Digest for October 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.
Thank God it wasn’t a Qur’an
http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/azflag.asp
Or there would have been trouble and the President would have spoken out.
Boehner surprise: Dems barely get votes to adjourn after floor speech
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/121599-boehner-decries-punt-on-tax-cut-vote-
Excerpt: House Democrats on Wednesday barely won a 210-209 vote to adjourn the House without extending the Bush tax cuts. Thirty-nine House Democrats voted against adjournment after Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) urged opposition to the motion in a floor speech that said it would be irresponsible for Congress to leave without providing certainty on the tax issue. Dozens of Democrats in tough races voted against adjourning. Vote no on this adjournment resolution. Give Congress a chance to vote on extending tax rates," Boehner said. Boehner's floor speech turned the vote on adjournment into a referendum on the tax cuts, which has divided Democrats for months. President Obama wants to extend tax cuts for families making less than $250,000, while allowing taxes to rise on income above that threshold. Many centrist Democrats have joined Republicans in arguing for extending all of the tax cuts. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Wednesday that the House would not vote on the expiring George W. Bush-era tax cuts before lawmakers break for the November midterm elections. The House is expected to conclude its work late Wednesday or early Thursday morning. (Sure. “Blue Dog” Democrat Rep. Bart Gordon was against ObamaCare—until the polls told him he couldn’t win. He announced he wasn’t running and voted for it. Re-elect Democrats and watch the economy get slammed by tax hikes in January. Count on it. ~Bob.)
ObamaCare's redistribution of health
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obamacare_redistribution_of_health_TMnDtf46D3hnBOKYee7oGL
Excerpt: New projections from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid paint a stark picture of the impact of the ObamaCare law: We're in for a massive redistribution of health resources. When the projections were released this month, news reports stressed that the president's "reform" utterly fails to slow the growth of health-care spending. Every year through 2019, employers and consumers will face higher premiums than if the law hadn't passed. But worse news is how radically the Obama law spreads the health wealth around. In 2014, a staggering 85.2 million people -- 31 percent of all nonelderly Americans -- will be on Medicaid and CHIP (the Medicaid-like children's health program). This accounts for the majority of those who'd gain health coverage. Amazingly, only 3 percent more people will have private insurance. President Obama pledged to reduce the number of uninsured by making health plans affordable -- but that's not how his law actually does it. Rather, it loosens Medicaid eligibility by raising the income ceiling and barring asset tests. In short, it pushes our country toward a welfare state. Often, workers put up with low salaries to get good health benefits for their families. But the new law stipulates that Medicaid recipients get the same benefits that employers are required to provide workers. That will diminish the incentive to work -- another step toward reversing welfare reform. Why stick it out on the job if the benefits are just as good in Medicaid?
The Era of Rationing Begins
http://www.pacificresearch.org/press/the-era-of-rationing-begins
Excerpt: Supporters of health reform said it would never happen. Maybe they got caught up in their own rhetoric. Maybe they just didn't want to believe it was possible. But rationing in America has started. By December, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to revoke approval of the drug Avastin for the treatment of advanced breast cancer. United States Senator David Vitter of Louisiana has described the anticipated move as "the beginning of a slippery slope leading to more and more rationing under the government takeover of health care." It seems that even loyal Democrats have noticed the Obama administration's not-so-subtle policy shift toward rationing. According to Politico, many of the 34 House Democrats who voted against the health reform bill are aggressively touting their "no" votes in campaign ads. The FDA claims its decision won't be based on cost, but Avastin isn't cheap -- a full regimen costs about $100,000 a year. Jean Grem of the FDA's Oncology Drug Advisory Committee was cited in the The Wall Street Journal explaining why she voted to deprive breast-cancer patients of Avastin: "We aren't supposed to talk about cost, but that's another issue." Two years ago, the FDA approved Avastin for breast cancer on the condition that further research would show the drug extended life expectancy. Everyone expected the drug to maintain its approval. Avastin has proven to be a wonder drug for countless women with stage IV breast cancer, slowing the disease's progression and dramatically extending life.
McDonald's May Drop Health Plan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703431604575522413101063070.html?mod=djemTMB_t
Excerpt: McDonald's Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul. The move is one of the clearest indications that new rules may disrupt workers' health plans as the law ripples through the real world. Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn't loosen a requirement for "mini-med" plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans. The requirement concerns the percentage of premiums that must be spent on benefits. While many restaurants don't offer health coverage, McDonald's provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year. Last week, a senior McDonald's official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain's insurer won't meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care. McDonald's and trade groups say the percentage, called a medical loss ratio, is unrealistic for mini-med plans because of high administrative costs owing to frequent worker turnover, combined with relatively low spending on claims. Democrats who drafted the health law wanted the requirement to prevent insurers from spending too much on executive salaries, marketing and other costs that they said don't directly help patients. McDonald's says the new health law threatens coverage for many workers, like these in Times Square. McDonald's move is the latest indication of possible unintended consequences from the health overhaul.
When do rules for the common good cross the line?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/28/AR2010092804878.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline
Excerpt: As Barack Obama told us at the Democratic convention in 2004, we are not a red and blue nation, etc., etc., etc. True enough, but we are a high-density/low-density nation. As a smallish-town girl come to the humongous city, I am all too aware of the appeal and horror of centralized government. Simply put, the more people cram themselves into small spaces, the more government will be involved in their lives. This isn't the stuff of revelation, of course, but it's a useful metaphor for the two prevailing worldviews now in conflict. If you live in a large urban area, chances are you are accustomed to lots of rules and regs. But to the newcomer, fresh from living largely independently by her own wits, the oppression of bureaucratic order is a fresh sort of hell. Not only did I move from a small town in South Carolina via a relatively quiet neighborhood in Washington, I also left a solo writing operation to join CNN, an international organization with layers upon layers of human management. Not that I'm complaining. Just sayin'. But between rules for potted plants on an apartment terrace and a building ban on lighting birthday candles, I've uttered more than once, "Now I know what it's like to live in communist China." Without, of course, the conveniences. (There’s my problem. I’m a low-density kind of guy, living in high-density Blagobamaville. ~Bob.)
Tea-Party Movement Gathers Strength
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882404575520252928390046.html?mod=rss_Politics_And_Policy
The way things are going, I think there’s money to be made investing in pitchforks and torches. ~Bob. Excerpt: The tea party has emerged as a potent force in American politics and a center of gravity within the Republican Party, with a large majority of Republicans showing an affinity for the movement that has repeatedly bucked the GOP leadership this year, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found. In the survey, 71% of Republicans described themselves as tea-party supporters, saying they had a favorable image of the movement or hoped tea- party candidates would do well in the Nov. 2 elections.
University of Chicago Law Prof's Blog About Struggling on $400Gs Draws Fire
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/28/super-rich-tax-hikes-todd-henderson-viral-blog-heritage-foundation/
Excerpt: A prominent college law professor's posting of his family's finances on the Web to make the case that they're struggling to make ends meet -- despite their estimated $400,000-plus income -- has lit the fuse of an online debate that he claims has made him the target of an "online lynch mob." Todd Henderson, a corporate law professor at the University of Chicago -- and a neighbor of President Obama -- says that since he posted his finances online he's been barraged with comments such as "die yuppie scum," forcing him to shut down his blog out of fear for his family…. He said he and his wife, a doctor, paid $100,000 in federal and state taxes last year and $15,000 in property taxes. He wrote that they have a mortgage on a house they own a short distance from President Obama’s home, and they are paying off $250,000 in Student Loans. With an annual income of more than $250,000, he wrote, he and his wife are far from super-rich.
Blog reader being hit by Obamacare
I am 66. When I turned 65, I opted for a Medicare Advantage plan (assume you know what that is). I have not really "tested" it nor do I wish to. Yesterday, I received a letter saying the plan will cease on January 1, 2011. They gave me some options. Coincidentally, on Rush's show yesterday, he announced a different co. in the northeast was dropping their Medicare Advantage plans as of January 1. Of course, this had been predicted after passage of Obamacare, so I was already looking at alternatives. At that point, a young self-employed man called in to announce he was notified of a premium increase of about 30% from a traditional health insurance company. Now, I don't fault any of the insurance providers. They are trying to operate in "Bizarro World" AKA Obamaland. No one knows what the rules are (whatever the government decides on a particular day?). So uncertainty abounds and a CYA mentality sets in. It has with me-big time! Frankly, I am surprised the economy is doing as well as it is. All of this is just a harbinger of things to come. Any country that would elect an Obama must necessarily expect all manner of horrors and outrages. Nothing in Obama land is so perverse that it can be ruled out. Best. –RG
Tea Party Movement is a Revival of the Middle Class
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/29/tea_party_movement_is_a_revival_of_the_middle_class.html
Excerpt: This liberal critique of the tea partiers -- a dangerous mob, but of marginal importance in post-racial America -- is a curious paradox. Why fear and loathe a movement said to be narrow in its views and scope? The answer was given to us in a remarkably prescient book, Christopher Lasch's "The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy," posthumously published in 1995. The noted historian, whose intellectual journey carried him from the left in the '60s to the populist right by the '90s, would have been giddy over the tea party. Lasch believed the only hope for American democracy lay in a revival of the middle class, particularly what were once known as middle-class virtues. The book title is an explicit ironic commentary on Jose Ortega y Gasset's 1932 (first English translation) classic: "The Revolt of the Masses."
The battle for the House: Where are the two parties spending their money?
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/house/early-ad-buys-shun-most-vulner.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics
Excerpt: The two national party committees tasked with winning House seats have begun to spend down their bank accounts on scads of ads that provide our best window yet into what each side views as its biggest opportunities and vulnerabilities. The National Republican Congressional Committee has now bought ad time in 31 districts, while the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has bought time in 24. The NRCC has spent nearly $6 million as compared to $3.7 million for the DCCC. The NRCC and DCCC have also reserved time in 55 and 67 districts, respectively, but reserving time is not the same as actually buying it since money can be moved almost until the moment the ads are scheduled to run. For the most part, the seats considered most vulnerable to switching parties are being ignored by both sides -- a sign that they may well be lost causes. Most of the districts targeted thus far are considered second-tier pickups -- the seats that will almost certainly make the difference between Republicans winning 39 seats, and not. There's any number of ways to slice and dice the data but we decided to break them down into three categories: districts where both committees are up with ads, districts where only Democrats are running commercials and districts where only Republicans are on TV….. At the moment, Democrats seem resigned to significant seat losses -- choosing to focus their money on three dozen or so races on which their control of the majority almost certainly rests.
Senate blocks recess appointments with deal between Dems, GOP
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/121775-senate-blocks-recess-appointments
Excerpt: Senate Democrats agreed Wednesday night to a Republican demand to block President Obama from making recess appointments while Congress is out of town campaigning for the midterm elections. Democratic leaders have agreed to schedule pro-forma sessions of the Senate every week over the next six weeks, a move that will prevent Obama from making emergency appointments, according to Senate sources briefed on the talks. Democrats agreed earlier in the day to a Republican demand to cut spending levels for government agencies in order to pass a stop-gap spending measure. Democrats are eager to get back home to defend their record to voters and they couldn’t do that until the spending bill passed. Under the law, the president can only make a recess appointment if the Senate is adjourned for more than three consecutive days. By scheduling pro forma sessions twice a week, lawmakers can take away Obama’s ability to make recess appointments. Obama had more than 110 executive- and judicial-branch nominees pending on the Senate’s executive calendar as of Wednesday afternoon. The Senate approved 54 of Obama’s nominees late Wednesday evening, including a dozen ambassadors, 11 U.S. Marshals and six U.S. attorneys.
House adjourns after passing short-term fix to fund federal government
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/121781-house-adjourns-after-passing-short-term-fix-to-fund-government
Excerpt: The House adjourned for the final time before the midterm elections early Thursday after passing a stop-gap funding measure to keep the government running while lawmakers campaign for their jobs. The bill, known as a continuing resolution, was approved 228-194 shortly after midnight. The Senate passed the measure earlier Wednesday by a vote of 69-30. The vote concluded an abbreviated pre-election legislative session that was dominated by a bill that neither chamber ultimately acted on: a proposal to extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year. Democrats came into the session with an ambitious agenda that became more limited as campaign politics and spending concerns took hold. In a busy legislative day on Wednesday, the House passed bills to extend healthcare benefits to first responders at Ground Zero on 9/11 and to confront Chinese currency manipulation. Lawmakers also approved the Intelligence Authorization Act, as well as dozens of non-controversial measures. But Congress did not get to several pieces of legislation, including a bill pushed by the White House and first lady Michelle Obama to boost funding for child nutrition initiatives. The unfinished business sets up what one Democratic senator has called the “mother of all lame-duck” session after the elections, in which Congress will have to grapple with the expiring tax cuts, an omnibus appropriations bills and other measures. Both chambers are scheduled to return Nov. 15, about two weeks after the election.
Rep. Rangel welcomes pre-election ethics trial
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/121741-rep-rangel-i-want-to-get-the-goddamn-thing-over-with-
Excerpt: Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) expressed frustration Wednesday with the House Ethics Committee and indicated that he would welcome a public trial on charges that he violated 13 House ethics rules before the November midterm elections. (Wink, wink. Sure he would. But a lot safer for them to give him a slap on the wrist after the election, when most voters stop paying attention. ~Bob.)
Stock rally might be best economic stimulus
http://www.usatoday.com/money/markets/2010-09-27-mart27_ST_N.htm
Excerpt: Lower taxes. Shovel-ready projects. Handouts from Uncle Sam. Those all have been touted as ways to boost the sluggish economy. But former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan has suggested a different form of economic stimulus: an old-fashioned stock rally with legs that makes investors feel richer and CEOs more confident. In a recent speech, Greenspan said the "most effective" stimulus is rising stock prices — not more government spending. Many Wall Street experts agree. "The stock market is a barometer of how people feel," says Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial. "Higher stock prices inspire confidence and help ignite spending.” (The coming Obama Tax Increases will kill any rally. But therein lies a Catch-22: Stocks are unlikely to keep rising if individual investors keep yanking cash out of stock funds. Right now, there is a disconnect between what Main Street investors say about the stock market and what they are actually doing with their money. Thanks to the best September performance for stocks since 1954 — Friday's big rally left the Standard & Poor's 500 up 9.5% since August — the percentage of individual investors who say they are "bullish" has risen to as high as 50% this month, up sharply from a two-year low of less than 21% in late August, a poll by the American Association of Individual Investors found ~Bob.)
Big Green: Portrait of a Big Green activist who scares your kids
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/special-editorial-reports/Portrait-of-a-Big-Green-activist-who-scares-your-kids-1038384-104011958.html#ixzz111dL5Vii
[Part 4 of 5.] Of all the questionable lessons being {taught to} American public schools students, the idea that Legos are destroying the planet might just be the most absurd. "Riding in the car one day with his parents in Tacoma, Wash., Rafael de la Torre Batker, 9, was worried about whether it would be bad for the planet if he got a new set of Legos," according to the New York Times. Where once we dispensed practical advice to children about consumerism like "waste not, want not," today's public schools too often teach kids that their new toys make them part of an apocalyptic death cult. According to the Times, Young Rafael's class had just watched "The Story of Stuff," an animated anti-capitalist diatribe by former Greenpeace employee Annie Leonard. The program, which was financed in part by left-wing Tides Foundation, is widely used by teachers suffused with environmental dogma. Leonard claims her video has been viewed by more than three million people online, and some 7,000 copies of the DVD have been sold. Another environmental group, Facing the Future, is developing curricula designed around the program for schools in all 50 states. ...Leonard describes herself as an "unapologetic activist," and isn't shy about painting hyperbolic doomsday environmental scenarios for children. In Leonard's 20 minute documentary, she explains the production of consumer goods with this: "Extraction, which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation, which is a fancy word for trashing the planets." Leonard embraces the long-discredited Malthusian view of natural resources, intoning darkly that "we are running out of resources and we are using too much stuff. ... In the past three decades, one third of the planet's natural resource base has been consumed - gone." Further, according to Leonard, we live on a "finite planet" where rain doesn't replenish water tables, new trees can't be planted and grown, and there are no new supplies of resources such as metals and fuels to be discovered.
A difficult time for health insurance companies in Massachusetts
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/09/difficult-time-health-insurance-companies-massachusetts.html
Excerpt: This has to be a very difficult time for insurance companies in Massachusetts. Notwithstanding that they are non-profits, they are under a lot of scrutiny with regard to reserve margins and profitability. Much of this is unfair, but I think that is just a sign of the times. Hospitals face a similar issue, too. Doctors are certainly next in line. But the Massachusetts insurers have an additional problem. They have been participants in creating a very large disparity in payment rates among hospitals, rate differentials based mainly on providers’ market power. They are now under pressure to limit rate increases to hospitals, but the ones that come up for renewal are not necessarily the ones that have received higher rates. Nonetheless, insurers are telling those who are up for renewal that they should expect no rate increase at all, or at best, an increase well below the rate of medical cost inflation. Those hospitals, by definition, are the ones without market power. So if the insurers hold them to low rate changes, the disparity between the have’s and the have-not’s will grow. This enhances the market power of their competitors, allowing them to poach doctors into their networks and gain still more market power. This increases the percentage of patients who go to the high-rate providers, aggravating the overall health care cost situation. (Last winter, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick denied proposed rate increases by 85% of all health insurers in the Commonwealth, ignoring the fact that most are non-profit organizations to begin with. A few increases have since been approved (for politically well-connected companies, of course), but most new policies are being written with no particular guaranteed term of fixed payments (in anticipation of later increases--of unknown size--being approved). By coincidence, this is an election year.... Politicians make decisions for political reasons, ONLY. Ron P.)
The Bipartisan Fight Against the Obama Tax Hikes
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/09/30/morning-bell-the-bipartisan-fight-against-the-obama-tax-hikes/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Excerpt: At 20 minutes after midnight this morning, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) gaveled the House out of session, assuring that Congress will now adjourn until after the November elections without taking any action to stop the Obama tax hikes. Earlier in the day, 39 Democrats defied Speaker Pelosi and voted with the minority to keep the House in session until they could vote on the impending tax hikes. Speaker Pelosi, who rarely votes on day-to-day legislation, was forced to cast the tie breaking vote (210-209) on the adjournment resolution. To the members of the majority who broke ranks with Speaker Pelosi, the meaning of the vote was clear: a vote to adjourn was a vote to raise taxes.
Scientists overcome hurdles to stem cell alternatives
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093003211.html?wpisrc=nl_natlalert
Excerpt: Scientists reported Thursday they had developed a technique that can quickly create safe alternatives to human embryonic stem cells, a major advance toward developing a less controversial approach for treating for a host of medical problems. The researchers published a series of experiments showing they can use laboratory-made versions of naturally occurring biological signals to quickly convert ordinary skin cells into cells that appear virtually identical to embryonic stem cells. Moreover, the same strategy can then coax those cells to morph into specific tissues that would be a perfect match for transplantation into patients. The work, by a team led by Derek J. Rossi of the Children's Hospital Boston, was praised by other researchers as a breakthrough. (So much for having to defeat the evil Republicans so we can cure disease. ~Bob.)
Al-Qaeda’s European Terror Plot
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7511/pub_detail.asp
Excerpt: Western Europe has been on edge recently, with fears of terror attacks. On September 17 this month Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, announced that it was “only a matter of time" before a terror attack was carried out in Britain by UK subjects. He suggested that people who had gone from Britain to Somalia to attend Al Shabaab training camps would be the assailants. He also spoke of the possibility of Northern Ireland potentially being subjected to a terror attack. This would be made by members of the “Real IRA.” Shortly after Evans’ warning, a British terror suspect, with apparent ties to Al Shabaab, was arrested at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport by the Netherlands’ Royal Marechaussee military police. The man, of Somali origin, had intended to board a plane bound for Entebbe in Uganda. He had taken a linking flight from Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport in Britain. His arrest had followed a tip-off from U.K. counter-terrorism officials. Yesterday, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was evacuated for the second time in two weeks. The first warning had come on September 14. The warning on Tuesday evening had come from a message sent from a pay-to-use public phone. On both occasions, the landmark was swept for evidence of bombs, and nothing was found. There have been four bomb warnings in the same number of weeks in Paris and, on each occasion, security has taken the threat seriously. (This story seems to have been dropped by the media? That’s because it is a threat from Muslims, not Tea Party members. ~Bob.)
Cyber War on Iran: the Siemens Connection
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/09/25/cyber-war-on-iran-the-siemens-connection/
Excerpt: While the boors and bores of the mainstream media continue to focus on the “crucial matters” of our time such as Stephen Colbert’s tedious appearance before Congress and whether a Delaware senatorial candidate spent two days as a witch in high school, news of real importance is breaking all around us. I am not just referring to the cataclysmic testimony by Chris Coates in front of the Civil Rights Commission on Friday, but to a yet bigger story with a potentially huge implications for geo-politics — the recent (and possibly ongoing) cyber attack on Iranian computers that may have temporarily crippled the nuclear capability (and who knows what else) of the totalitarian Islamic state. Yesterday, I wrote some preliminary words about this highly sophisticated attack by the so-called “Stuxnet” worm; today we learn the startling news the Iranians themselves have admitted that something serious has happened. Such admissions are certainly not common from the secretive state. From Asia Bizz: The Iranian Ministry has stated that some 30000 industrial computers have been infected by Stuxnet. One of the main operations done by Stuxnet is that it extracts vital information from these systems and then sends it somewhere abroad. Iran has termed this virus as a spy virus, as it is deploying vital data to other countries. On the other hand it is said, a similar attack has been reported from Iran’s latest nuclear power plant facility, but these reports have not yet been confirmed.
How Dems hope to sell 'broccoli'
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/how_dems_hope_to_sell_broccoli_ifSpUiwKK0LQIWlY1x7yrJ
Excerpt: It is a lawyers' adage: If you have the law on your side, argue the law; if you have the facts, argue the facts; if you have neither, pound the table. Forgive the Democrats for their table-pounding. They can't run on their record, which has two pillars. One is the stimulus that didn't stimulate as they said it would (or else unemployment wouldn't be above 8 percent). The report that the recession ended in June 2009 means the feeble recovery began before stimulus spending really started. The second pillar is the health-care legislation. It remains as unpopular as it was when the administration told Americans to pipe down and eat their broccoli. Unable to campaign retrospectively, Democrats also can't campaign prospectively: "Elect us and get more broccoli!" Hence the table-pounding: The Tea Party is a death panel for America's happiness. As the year began, we were warned that Tea Partiers wouldn't play nicely with others -- wouldn't abide by the mores and outcomes of the two-party competition. It is, however, some anti-Tea Party "moderates" who exemplify repulsive politics this year.
S.D. School District Distributes Guide to Help Illegal Alien Students Avoid Deportation
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/sep/25/debate-over-guide-immigrants-rights-during-raids-d/
Your tax dollars at work, protecting lawbreakers. ~Bob. Excerpt: Excerpt: A countywide public school network for at-risk children is encouraging teachers to address students’ concerns about immigration raids and deportations — an effort that’s receiving mixed reviews from law enforcement agencies. Police are objecting to one key element: an illustrated guide on how to protect yourself from raids by not saying too much, not carrying certain documents and not signing forms without consulting a lawyer. The guide, which was distributed to teachers and students at two recent events, depicts burly police officers in sunglasses and fear-stricken immigrants in handcuffs who refuse to give information before speaking to an attorney. It includes a wallet-sized “know your rights” card.
Ayodhya holy site crisis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11436552
A long Islamic record of building mosques on other religions’ holy sites, to crush them. See Temple Mount for more evidence. ~Bob. Excerpt: The religious site where the Babri mosque was destroyed in 1992 in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya has been a flashpoint between Hindus and Muslims for years. BBC News looks at the troubled history of the disputed holy site. 1528: A mosque is built on the site which some Hindus say marks the spot where one of the most revered deities in Hinduism, Lord Ram, was born. 1853: First recorded incidents of religious violence at the site. 1859: British colonial administration erects a fence to separate the places of worship, allowing the inner court to be used by Muslims and the outer court by Hindus.
Americans Still Cling to Ignorance
http://townhall.com/columnists/VictorDavisHanson/2010/09/30/americans_still_cling_to_ignorance
Excerpt: The bookish, twice-unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson once sighed that if most thinking people supported him, it still wouldn't be enough in America because, "I need a majority." For some reason, Democrats have chosen to follow the disastrous model of Stevenson and not that of feisty man-of-the-people Missourian Harry Truman -- though the former nearly wrecked the party and the latter got elected. Former President Jimmy Carter likewise seems to feel that he's still too smart for us. Carter, who turns 86 on Friday, is hitting the news shows to explain why he remains America's "superior" ex-president -- and why more than 30 years ago he was so successful yet so underappreciated as our chief executive. Most Americans instead remember a very different President Carter who finished his single term with 18 percent inflation, 18 percent interest rates, 11 percent unemployment, long gas lines, and a world in chaos from hostage-taking in Teheran and Soviet communist aggression in Afghanistan and Central America. Now, John Kerry -- who failed to win the presidency in 2004 and recently tried to avoid state sales taxes on his new $7 million yacht -- is voicing similar frustrations about Americans' inability to fathom what their betters are trying to do for them. He is furious that an unsophisticated electorate might not return congressional Democratic majorities in 2010. Kerry laments that, "We have an electorate that doesn't always pay that much attention to what's going on." Instead it falls for "a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what's happening." … In the 2008 campaign, Michelle Obama at one point said of her husband's burden, "Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics." That sense of intellectual superiority was channeled by Barack Obama himself when he later tried to explain why his message was not resonating with less astute rural Pennsylvanians: "And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." (Actually, Thomas Sowell reports that Stevenson wasn’t as “bookish” as Truman. “Adlai Stevenson was certainly regarded as an intellectual by intellectuals in the 1950s. But, half a century later, facts paint a very different picture. Historian Michael Beschloss, among others, has noted that Stevenson “could go quite happily for months or years without picking up a book.” But Stevenson had the airs of an intellectual — the form, rather than the substance. What is more telling, form was enough to impress the intellectuals, not only then but even now, years after the facts have been revealed, though apparently not to Mr. Kristof. That is one of many reasons why intellectuals are not taken as seriously by others as they take themselves. As for reading the classics, President Harry Truman, whom no one thought of as an intellectual, was a voracious reader of heavyweight stuff like Thucydides and read Cicero in the original Latin. When Chief Justice Carl Vinson quoted in Latin, Truman was able to correct him. Yet intellectuals tended to think of the unpretentious and plain-spoken Truman as little more than a country bumpkin. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/226296/intellectuals/thomas-sowell)
AP Sources: Emanuel to resign as White House chief of staff Friday, to begin Chicago mayor bid
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093001036.html?wpisrc=nl_natlalert
We gotta get out of this place. ~Bob.
Obama’s Generals
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2010/09/29/obamas-generals/
Excerpt: Obama had to do this 18-month surge just to demonstrate, in effect, that it couldn’t be done . . . the president had treated the military as another political constituency that had to be accommodated.” –LTG Douglas Lute, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan as quoted in the Washington Post .The past three days the Washington Post has been serializing the new Bob Woodward book, “Obama’s Wars,” on the front page of that paper. Though I have been stunned by what I’ve read I haven’t been surprised. That a feckless and un-serious man when elected president would pursue a war in a feckless and un-serious way should surprise no one. What has left me stunned is the fact that Obama never seriously considered whether winning the war in Afghanistan (or sealing the victory in Iraq) was in the national interests of the United States. His lodestar was rather an arbitrary and precipitous withdrawal date in July 2011. Here you have it in black and white. The surge of troops into Afghanistan was below the number recommended by his military advisers. Obama did not support the surge, he was fixated on an early withdrawal, but he lacked the courage to make that decision. How a president can continue to waste the lives of young Americans in a war he neither believes in or cares about is beyond my comprehension. Worse, no one is surprised that Obama would do this. Anti-Americanism is seems to have been programmed into his DNA, to the point where everyone just expects him to act this way. But that isn’t what this story is about. It’s about the people around him, including our most senior uniformed leaders - men who know better - who have allowed this to happen. (So a General says the troops are dying to prove that liberals are correct that we can’t win? ~Bob)
What did you “dabble” in?
Pushing the statement by Christine O’Donnell that in high school she dabbled in witchcraft (apparently the major news of the week) the cartoonists are having fun. Bill Clinton: “I dabbled on a blue dress.” Michael Moore: “I dabbled in cheeseburgers.” I’m sure my readers can think of more (try to keep them clean) to post as comments. Like the following. Charles Rangel: I dabbled in tax evasion.” Maxine Waters: I dabble in political intervention in my husbands banks. Alexi Giannoulias: I dabbled in loans to crooks. Barack Obama: I dabbled in Christianity. And Islam. Obama’s cabinet: I dabbled in paying taxes.
If Terrorism is Not a Muslim Threat, What About Muslim Violence?
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7520/pub_detail.asp
Excerpt: A study (pdf) from Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill maintains that the terrorist threat posed by radical Islam has been greatly exaggerated. The study captured front page headlines in Arab News and newspapers throughout the Muslim world. Charles Kurzman, one of the co-authors of the study, maintains that fewer than three dozen murders have been committed by American Muslims on American soil. What Kurzman fails to take into account are the number of murders committed by non-American Muslims on American soil and the homicides perpetuated by members of the Nation of Islam. The actual figures show that Islamophobia is a justifiable stance since Muslims have been responsible for the murders of 5,000 Americans in the past fifty years. This number includes the nearly 3,000 Americans killed on 9/11 and the hundreds of victims of the so-called Zebra killings that took place in the 1970s.
Thailand, Islamic rebels disguised as policemen fire on crowd: 5 dead and 3 injured
http://www.asianews.asia.com/news-en/Thailand,-Islamic-rebels-disguised-as-policemen-fire-on-crowd:-5-dead-and-3-injured-19582.html
Didn’t get the memo. Five years from now they’ll demand to build a mosque there to “promote peace. ~Bob.
Ali? Bah!
http://www.steynonline.com/content/blogcategory/20/203/
Excerpt: Despite being a bit of an old showbiz queen, I’m not much for the huggy-kissy photo wall of me sharing a joke with various luvvies. I make an exception on the bureau behind my desk for a shot of yours truly and a beautiful woman, Somali by birth, Dutch by citizenship, at a beachfront bar in Malibu at sunset. I like the picture because, while I look rather bleary with a few too many chins, my companion is bright-eyed with a huge smile on her face and having a grand old time—grand, that is, because of its very normality: a crappy bar, drinks with cocktail umbrellas, a roomful of blithely ignorant California hedonists who’ll all be going back home at the end of the evening to Dancing With the Stars or Conan O’Brien or some other amusement. Ayaan Hirsi Ali can’t lead that life. She lives under armed guard and was forced to abandon the Netherlands because quite a lot of people want to kill her. And not in the desultory behead-the-enemies-of-Islam you-will-die-infidel pro forma death-threats-R-us way that many of us have perforce gotten used to in recent years: her great friend and professional collaborator was murdered in the streets of Amsterdam by a man who shot him eight times, attempted to decapitate him, and then drove into his chest two knives, pinning to what was left of him a five-page note pledging to do the same to her. What would you do in those circumstances? Ayaan and I had repaired to that third-rate bar after a day-long conference on Islam, jihad, free speech and whatnot. That’s usually where I run into her, whether in Malibu or at the Carlton Club in London or at a less illustrious venue. Would you be doing that with a price on your head? Or would you duck out of sight, lie low, change your name, move to New Zealand, and hope one day to get your life back? After the threats against the Comedy Central show South Park the other week, Ms. Hirsi Ali turned up on CNN to say that the best defence against Islamic intimidation is for us all to stand together and thereby “share the risk.” But, around the world, every single translator of her books has insisted on total anonymity. When push comes to shove, very few are willing to share the risk. The British historian Andrew Roberts calls her “the bravest woman I know.” I would say she is not only the bravest but also, given her circumstances, the most optimistic. I have an unbounded admiration for her personally, but a not insignificant difference philosophically, of which more momentarily. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s great cause is women’s liberation. Unfortunately for her, the women she wants to liberate are Muslim, so she gets minimal support and indeed a ton of hostility from Western feminists who have reconciled themselves, consciously or otherwise, to the two-tier sisterhood: when it comes to clitoridectomies, forced marriages, honour killings, etc., multiculturalism trumps feminism. Liberal men are, if anything, even more opposed. She long ago got used to the hectoring TV interviewer, from Avi Lewis on the CBC a while back to Tavis Smiley on PBS just the other day, insisting that say what you like about Islam but everyone knows that Christians are just as backward and violent, if not more so. The media left spends endless hours and most of its interminable awards ceremonies congratulating itself on its courage, on “speaking truth to power,” the bravery of dissent and all the rest, but faced with a pro-gay secular black feminist who actually lives it they frost up in nothing flat.
Islamophilia: Generating a Social Disease
http://shawmut.blogspot.com/2010/09/islamophilia-social-disease.html
Excerpt: There are many afflictions upon mankind that can be identified in qualified terms; corruption in politics, nihilism in philosophy, behavior in culture and everything from murder to simony in religion. Collectively, those areas of affliction could complement the fullness of society. Today, we are looking at a predatory affliction that I see as a social affliction; a social disease, if you will. I call it Islamophilia. Given the ardor in negotiating against any examination of Islamic development, I look at this situation as a new chic - among some it has even become a radical chic; not unlike body piercing or tattoos, or the hirsuteness of the Sixties, and I term it impassioned Islamophilia. Let me emphasize I’m looking at its goal of totality. Now, the last thing I’m going to do is look at Western History and let it off with five “Our Fathers” and five “Hail Mary’s”. But before historical mavens get all excited, let me reminds us all that we have labored and campaigned to exorcise our demons; and we do yet. Clio, that Muse of History, bears a pretty hefty conscience. And, before I sound as though I’m going to lecture, let me advise you, I have no such license. In recent years we have been issued by the victim industry a new term: “Islamophobia” It’s been taken as the new secular sin. It is hurled about when one merely questions the appropriateness of the application of anything that is even remotely associated with Muslims as pertains to politics (world, national or provincial), philosophical, cultural or religious (again, I admit to my broad brush of the social). Even questioning text-books, mandatory diet inclusions to zoning ordinances in which the slightest inference of an Islamic factor is harshly challenged. It’s as though a fire was set.
I see white people
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=19744
Excerpt: I thought the University of Wisconsin was a major photo-op. Where are the photos — vistas of hopeful, youthful faces? There’s a tiny thumbnail here in the NYT. Help me find some pictures or I’m going with the theory — offered by those who looked at my pictures — that the crowd was — as all those news media people loved to say about the Tea Party rallies — overwhelmingly white. My pictures were taken on Bascom Hill and the Memorial Union Terrace — overflow areas with piped in sound/video. I did not go through security and into the Library Mall area where the President could be seen in person, and I thought we were going to get some grand wide-angle shots of the President and his enthusiasts.
IL Rep. Schakowsky: The ‘Right’ to Abortion Creates ‘Obligation’ For Tax-Payers to Fund Them
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=19721
Excerpt: Rep. Jan Schakowsky says, “The right to abortion creates an obligation for taxpayers to fund them.” Schakowsky also backed the assertion that abortion is safer than childbirth. (My Congress Critter. But I think the name is spelled “Shesacommie.” So the right to own guns thus creates a government obligation to buy me one? I’ll take an M-14 please. ~Bob)
Thank God it wasn’t a Qur’an
http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/azflag.asp
Or there would have been trouble and the President would have spoken out.
Boehner surprise: Dems barely get votes to adjourn after floor speech
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/121599-boehner-decries-punt-on-tax-cut-vote-
Excerpt: House Democrats on Wednesday barely won a 210-209 vote to adjourn the House without extending the Bush tax cuts. Thirty-nine House Democrats voted against adjournment after Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) urged opposition to the motion in a floor speech that said it would be irresponsible for Congress to leave without providing certainty on the tax issue. Dozens of Democrats in tough races voted against adjourning. Vote no on this adjournment resolution. Give Congress a chance to vote on extending tax rates," Boehner said. Boehner's floor speech turned the vote on adjournment into a referendum on the tax cuts, which has divided Democrats for months. President Obama wants to extend tax cuts for families making less than $250,000, while allowing taxes to rise on income above that threshold. Many centrist Democrats have joined Republicans in arguing for extending all of the tax cuts. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Wednesday that the House would not vote on the expiring George W. Bush-era tax cuts before lawmakers break for the November midterm elections. The House is expected to conclude its work late Wednesday or early Thursday morning. (Sure. “Blue Dog” Democrat Rep. Bart Gordon was against ObamaCare—until the polls told him he couldn’t win. He announced he wasn’t running and voted for it. Re-elect Democrats and watch the economy get slammed by tax hikes in January. Count on it. ~Bob.)
ObamaCare's redistribution of health
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obamacare_redistribution_of_health_TMnDtf46D3hnBOKYee7oGL
Excerpt: New projections from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid paint a stark picture of the impact of the ObamaCare law: We're in for a massive redistribution of health resources. When the projections were released this month, news reports stressed that the president's "reform" utterly fails to slow the growth of health-care spending. Every year through 2019, employers and consumers will face higher premiums than if the law hadn't passed. But worse news is how radically the Obama law spreads the health wealth around. In 2014, a staggering 85.2 million people -- 31 percent of all nonelderly Americans -- will be on Medicaid and CHIP (the Medicaid-like children's health program). This accounts for the majority of those who'd gain health coverage. Amazingly, only 3 percent more people will have private insurance. President Obama pledged to reduce the number of uninsured by making health plans affordable -- but that's not how his law actually does it. Rather, it loosens Medicaid eligibility by raising the income ceiling and barring asset tests. In short, it pushes our country toward a welfare state. Often, workers put up with low salaries to get good health benefits for their families. But the new law stipulates that Medicaid recipients get the same benefits that employers are required to provide workers. That will diminish the incentive to work -- another step toward reversing welfare reform. Why stick it out on the job if the benefits are just as good in Medicaid?
The Era of Rationing Begins
http://www.pacificresearch.org/press/the-era-of-rationing-begins
Excerpt: Supporters of health reform said it would never happen. Maybe they got caught up in their own rhetoric. Maybe they just didn't want to believe it was possible. But rationing in America has started. By December, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to revoke approval of the drug Avastin for the treatment of advanced breast cancer. United States Senator David Vitter of Louisiana has described the anticipated move as "the beginning of a slippery slope leading to more and more rationing under the government takeover of health care." It seems that even loyal Democrats have noticed the Obama administration's not-so-subtle policy shift toward rationing. According to Politico, many of the 34 House Democrats who voted against the health reform bill are aggressively touting their "no" votes in campaign ads. The FDA claims its decision won't be based on cost, but Avastin isn't cheap -- a full regimen costs about $100,000 a year. Jean Grem of the FDA's Oncology Drug Advisory Committee was cited in the The Wall Street Journal explaining why she voted to deprive breast-cancer patients of Avastin: "We aren't supposed to talk about cost, but that's another issue." Two years ago, the FDA approved Avastin for breast cancer on the condition that further research would show the drug extended life expectancy. Everyone expected the drug to maintain its approval. Avastin has proven to be a wonder drug for countless women with stage IV breast cancer, slowing the disease's progression and dramatically extending life.
McDonald's May Drop Health Plan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703431604575522413101063070.html?mod=djemTMB_t
Excerpt: McDonald's Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul. The move is one of the clearest indications that new rules may disrupt workers' health plans as the law ripples through the real world. Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn't loosen a requirement for "mini-med" plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans. The requirement concerns the percentage of premiums that must be spent on benefits. While many restaurants don't offer health coverage, McDonald's provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year. Last week, a senior McDonald's official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain's insurer won't meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care. McDonald's and trade groups say the percentage, called a medical loss ratio, is unrealistic for mini-med plans because of high administrative costs owing to frequent worker turnover, combined with relatively low spending on claims. Democrats who drafted the health law wanted the requirement to prevent insurers from spending too much on executive salaries, marketing and other costs that they said don't directly help patients. McDonald's says the new health law threatens coverage for many workers, like these in Times Square. McDonald's move is the latest indication of possible unintended consequences from the health overhaul.
When do rules for the common good cross the line?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/28/AR2010092804878.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline
Excerpt: As Barack Obama told us at the Democratic convention in 2004, we are not a red and blue nation, etc., etc., etc. True enough, but we are a high-density/low-density nation. As a smallish-town girl come to the humongous city, I am all too aware of the appeal and horror of centralized government. Simply put, the more people cram themselves into small spaces, the more government will be involved in their lives. This isn't the stuff of revelation, of course, but it's a useful metaphor for the two prevailing worldviews now in conflict. If you live in a large urban area, chances are you are accustomed to lots of rules and regs. But to the newcomer, fresh from living largely independently by her own wits, the oppression of bureaucratic order is a fresh sort of hell. Not only did I move from a small town in South Carolina via a relatively quiet neighborhood in Washington, I also left a solo writing operation to join CNN, an international organization with layers upon layers of human management. Not that I'm complaining. Just sayin'. But between rules for potted plants on an apartment terrace and a building ban on lighting birthday candles, I've uttered more than once, "Now I know what it's like to live in communist China." Without, of course, the conveniences. (There’s my problem. I’m a low-density kind of guy, living in high-density Blagobamaville. ~Bob.)
Tea-Party Movement Gathers Strength
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882404575520252928390046.html?mod=rss_Politics_And_Policy
The way things are going, I think there’s money to be made investing in pitchforks and torches. ~Bob. Excerpt: The tea party has emerged as a potent force in American politics and a center of gravity within the Republican Party, with a large majority of Republicans showing an affinity for the movement that has repeatedly bucked the GOP leadership this year, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found. In the survey, 71% of Republicans described themselves as tea-party supporters, saying they had a favorable image of the movement or hoped tea- party candidates would do well in the Nov. 2 elections.
University of Chicago Law Prof's Blog About Struggling on $400Gs Draws Fire
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/28/super-rich-tax-hikes-todd-henderson-viral-blog-heritage-foundation/
Excerpt: A prominent college law professor's posting of his family's finances on the Web to make the case that they're struggling to make ends meet -- despite their estimated $400,000-plus income -- has lit the fuse of an online debate that he claims has made him the target of an "online lynch mob." Todd Henderson, a corporate law professor at the University of Chicago -- and a neighbor of President Obama -- says that since he posted his finances online he's been barraged with comments such as "die yuppie scum," forcing him to shut down his blog out of fear for his family…. He said he and his wife, a doctor, paid $100,000 in federal and state taxes last year and $15,000 in property taxes. He wrote that they have a mortgage on a house they own a short distance from President Obama’s home, and they are paying off $250,000 in Student Loans. With an annual income of more than $250,000, he wrote, he and his wife are far from super-rich.
Blog reader being hit by Obamacare
I am 66. When I turned 65, I opted for a Medicare Advantage plan (assume you know what that is). I have not really "tested" it nor do I wish to. Yesterday, I received a letter saying the plan will cease on January 1, 2011. They gave me some options. Coincidentally, on Rush's show yesterday, he announced a different co. in the northeast was dropping their Medicare Advantage plans as of January 1. Of course, this had been predicted after passage of Obamacare, so I was already looking at alternatives. At that point, a young self-employed man called in to announce he was notified of a premium increase of about 30% from a traditional health insurance company. Now, I don't fault any of the insurance providers. They are trying to operate in "Bizarro World" AKA Obamaland. No one knows what the rules are (whatever the government decides on a particular day?). So uncertainty abounds and a CYA mentality sets in. It has with me-big time! Frankly, I am surprised the economy is doing as well as it is. All of this is just a harbinger of things to come. Any country that would elect an Obama must necessarily expect all manner of horrors and outrages. Nothing in Obama land is so perverse that it can be ruled out. Best. –RG
Tea Party Movement is a Revival of the Middle Class
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/29/tea_party_movement_is_a_revival_of_the_middle_class.html
Excerpt: This liberal critique of the tea partiers -- a dangerous mob, but of marginal importance in post-racial America -- is a curious paradox. Why fear and loathe a movement said to be narrow in its views and scope? The answer was given to us in a remarkably prescient book, Christopher Lasch's "The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy," posthumously published in 1995. The noted historian, whose intellectual journey carried him from the left in the '60s to the populist right by the '90s, would have been giddy over the tea party. Lasch believed the only hope for American democracy lay in a revival of the middle class, particularly what were once known as middle-class virtues. The book title is an explicit ironic commentary on Jose Ortega y Gasset's 1932 (first English translation) classic: "The Revolt of the Masses."
The battle for the House: Where are the two parties spending their money?
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/house/early-ad-buys-shun-most-vulner.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics
Excerpt: The two national party committees tasked with winning House seats have begun to spend down their bank accounts on scads of ads that provide our best window yet into what each side views as its biggest opportunities and vulnerabilities. The National Republican Congressional Committee has now bought ad time in 31 districts, while the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has bought time in 24. The NRCC has spent nearly $6 million as compared to $3.7 million for the DCCC. The NRCC and DCCC have also reserved time in 55 and 67 districts, respectively, but reserving time is not the same as actually buying it since money can be moved almost until the moment the ads are scheduled to run. For the most part, the seats considered most vulnerable to switching parties are being ignored by both sides -- a sign that they may well be lost causes. Most of the districts targeted thus far are considered second-tier pickups -- the seats that will almost certainly make the difference between Republicans winning 39 seats, and not. There's any number of ways to slice and dice the data but we decided to break them down into three categories: districts where both committees are up with ads, districts where only Democrats are running commercials and districts where only Republicans are on TV….. At the moment, Democrats seem resigned to significant seat losses -- choosing to focus their money on three dozen or so races on which their control of the majority almost certainly rests.
Senate blocks recess appointments with deal between Dems, GOP
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/121775-senate-blocks-recess-appointments
Excerpt: Senate Democrats agreed Wednesday night to a Republican demand to block President Obama from making recess appointments while Congress is out of town campaigning for the midterm elections. Democratic leaders have agreed to schedule pro-forma sessions of the Senate every week over the next six weeks, a move that will prevent Obama from making emergency appointments, according to Senate sources briefed on the talks. Democrats agreed earlier in the day to a Republican demand to cut spending levels for government agencies in order to pass a stop-gap spending measure. Democrats are eager to get back home to defend their record to voters and they couldn’t do that until the spending bill passed. Under the law, the president can only make a recess appointment if the Senate is adjourned for more than three consecutive days. By scheduling pro forma sessions twice a week, lawmakers can take away Obama’s ability to make recess appointments. Obama had more than 110 executive- and judicial-branch nominees pending on the Senate’s executive calendar as of Wednesday afternoon. The Senate approved 54 of Obama’s nominees late Wednesday evening, including a dozen ambassadors, 11 U.S. Marshals and six U.S. attorneys.
House adjourns after passing short-term fix to fund federal government
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/121781-house-adjourns-after-passing-short-term-fix-to-fund-government
Excerpt: The House adjourned for the final time before the midterm elections early Thursday after passing a stop-gap funding measure to keep the government running while lawmakers campaign for their jobs. The bill, known as a continuing resolution, was approved 228-194 shortly after midnight. The Senate passed the measure earlier Wednesday by a vote of 69-30. The vote concluded an abbreviated pre-election legislative session that was dominated by a bill that neither chamber ultimately acted on: a proposal to extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year. Democrats came into the session with an ambitious agenda that became more limited as campaign politics and spending concerns took hold. In a busy legislative day on Wednesday, the House passed bills to extend healthcare benefits to first responders at Ground Zero on 9/11 and to confront Chinese currency manipulation. Lawmakers also approved the Intelligence Authorization Act, as well as dozens of non-controversial measures. But Congress did not get to several pieces of legislation, including a bill pushed by the White House and first lady Michelle Obama to boost funding for child nutrition initiatives. The unfinished business sets up what one Democratic senator has called the “mother of all lame-duck” session after the elections, in which Congress will have to grapple with the expiring tax cuts, an omnibus appropriations bills and other measures. Both chambers are scheduled to return Nov. 15, about two weeks after the election.
Rep. Rangel welcomes pre-election ethics trial
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/121741-rep-rangel-i-want-to-get-the-goddamn-thing-over-with-
Excerpt: Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) expressed frustration Wednesday with the House Ethics Committee and indicated that he would welcome a public trial on charges that he violated 13 House ethics rules before the November midterm elections. (Wink, wink. Sure he would. But a lot safer for them to give him a slap on the wrist after the election, when most voters stop paying attention. ~Bob.)
Stock rally might be best economic stimulus
http://www.usatoday.com/money/markets/2010-09-27-mart27_ST_N.htm
Excerpt: Lower taxes. Shovel-ready projects. Handouts from Uncle Sam. Those all have been touted as ways to boost the sluggish economy. But former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan has suggested a different form of economic stimulus: an old-fashioned stock rally with legs that makes investors feel richer and CEOs more confident. In a recent speech, Greenspan said the "most effective" stimulus is rising stock prices — not more government spending. Many Wall Street experts agree. "The stock market is a barometer of how people feel," says Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial. "Higher stock prices inspire confidence and help ignite spending.” (The coming Obama Tax Increases will kill any rally. But therein lies a Catch-22: Stocks are unlikely to keep rising if individual investors keep yanking cash out of stock funds. Right now, there is a disconnect between what Main Street investors say about the stock market and what they are actually doing with their money. Thanks to the best September performance for stocks since 1954 — Friday's big rally left the Standard & Poor's 500 up 9.5% since August — the percentage of individual investors who say they are "bullish" has risen to as high as 50% this month, up sharply from a two-year low of less than 21% in late August, a poll by the American Association of Individual Investors found ~Bob.)
Big Green: Portrait of a Big Green activist who scares your kids
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/special-editorial-reports/Portrait-of-a-Big-Green-activist-who-scares-your-kids-1038384-104011958.html#ixzz111dL5Vii
[Part 4 of 5.] Of all the questionable lessons being {taught to} American public schools students, the idea that Legos are destroying the planet might just be the most absurd. "Riding in the car one day with his parents in Tacoma, Wash., Rafael de la Torre Batker, 9, was worried about whether it would be bad for the planet if he got a new set of Legos," according to the New York Times. Where once we dispensed practical advice to children about consumerism like "waste not, want not," today's public schools too often teach kids that their new toys make them part of an apocalyptic death cult. According to the Times, Young Rafael's class had just watched "The Story of Stuff," an animated anti-capitalist diatribe by former Greenpeace employee Annie Leonard. The program, which was financed in part by left-wing Tides Foundation, is widely used by teachers suffused with environmental dogma. Leonard claims her video has been viewed by more than three million people online, and some 7,000 copies of the DVD have been sold. Another environmental group, Facing the Future, is developing curricula designed around the program for schools in all 50 states. ...Leonard describes herself as an "unapologetic activist," and isn't shy about painting hyperbolic doomsday environmental scenarios for children. In Leonard's 20 minute documentary, she explains the production of consumer goods with this: "Extraction, which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation, which is a fancy word for trashing the planets." Leonard embraces the long-discredited Malthusian view of natural resources, intoning darkly that "we are running out of resources and we are using too much stuff. ... In the past three decades, one third of the planet's natural resource base has been consumed - gone." Further, according to Leonard, we live on a "finite planet" where rain doesn't replenish water tables, new trees can't be planted and grown, and there are no new supplies of resources such as metals and fuels to be discovered.
A difficult time for health insurance companies in Massachusetts
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/09/difficult-time-health-insurance-companies-massachusetts.html
Excerpt: This has to be a very difficult time for insurance companies in Massachusetts. Notwithstanding that they are non-profits, they are under a lot of scrutiny with regard to reserve margins and profitability. Much of this is unfair, but I think that is just a sign of the times. Hospitals face a similar issue, too. Doctors are certainly next in line. But the Massachusetts insurers have an additional problem. They have been participants in creating a very large disparity in payment rates among hospitals, rate differentials based mainly on providers’ market power. They are now under pressure to limit rate increases to hospitals, but the ones that come up for renewal are not necessarily the ones that have received higher rates. Nonetheless, insurers are telling those who are up for renewal that they should expect no rate increase at all, or at best, an increase well below the rate of medical cost inflation. Those hospitals, by definition, are the ones without market power. So if the insurers hold them to low rate changes, the disparity between the have’s and the have-not’s will grow. This enhances the market power of their competitors, allowing them to poach doctors into their networks and gain still more market power. This increases the percentage of patients who go to the high-rate providers, aggravating the overall health care cost situation. (Last winter, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick denied proposed rate increases by 85% of all health insurers in the Commonwealth, ignoring the fact that most are non-profit organizations to begin with. A few increases have since been approved (for politically well-connected companies, of course), but most new policies are being written with no particular guaranteed term of fixed payments (in anticipation of later increases--of unknown size--being approved). By coincidence, this is an election year.... Politicians make decisions for political reasons, ONLY. Ron P.)
The Bipartisan Fight Against the Obama Tax Hikes
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/09/30/morning-bell-the-bipartisan-fight-against-the-obama-tax-hikes/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Excerpt: At 20 minutes after midnight this morning, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) gaveled the House out of session, assuring that Congress will now adjourn until after the November elections without taking any action to stop the Obama tax hikes. Earlier in the day, 39 Democrats defied Speaker Pelosi and voted with the minority to keep the House in session until they could vote on the impending tax hikes. Speaker Pelosi, who rarely votes on day-to-day legislation, was forced to cast the tie breaking vote (210-209) on the adjournment resolution. To the members of the majority who broke ranks with Speaker Pelosi, the meaning of the vote was clear: a vote to adjourn was a vote to raise taxes.
Scientists overcome hurdles to stem cell alternatives
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093003211.html?wpisrc=nl_natlalert
Excerpt: Scientists reported Thursday they had developed a technique that can quickly create safe alternatives to human embryonic stem cells, a major advance toward developing a less controversial approach for treating for a host of medical problems. The researchers published a series of experiments showing they can use laboratory-made versions of naturally occurring biological signals to quickly convert ordinary skin cells into cells that appear virtually identical to embryonic stem cells. Moreover, the same strategy can then coax those cells to morph into specific tissues that would be a perfect match for transplantation into patients. The work, by a team led by Derek J. Rossi of the Children's Hospital Boston, was praised by other researchers as a breakthrough. (So much for having to defeat the evil Republicans so we can cure disease. ~Bob.)
Al-Qaeda’s European Terror Plot
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7511/pub_detail.asp
Excerpt: Western Europe has been on edge recently, with fears of terror attacks. On September 17 this month Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, announced that it was “only a matter of time" before a terror attack was carried out in Britain by UK subjects. He suggested that people who had gone from Britain to Somalia to attend Al Shabaab training camps would be the assailants. He also spoke of the possibility of Northern Ireland potentially being subjected to a terror attack. This would be made by members of the “Real IRA.” Shortly after Evans’ warning, a British terror suspect, with apparent ties to Al Shabaab, was arrested at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport by the Netherlands’ Royal Marechaussee military police. The man, of Somali origin, had intended to board a plane bound for Entebbe in Uganda. He had taken a linking flight from Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport in Britain. His arrest had followed a tip-off from U.K. counter-terrorism officials. Yesterday, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was evacuated for the second time in two weeks. The first warning had come on September 14. The warning on Tuesday evening had come from a message sent from a pay-to-use public phone. On both occasions, the landmark was swept for evidence of bombs, and nothing was found. There have been four bomb warnings in the same number of weeks in Paris and, on each occasion, security has taken the threat seriously. (This story seems to have been dropped by the media? That’s because it is a threat from Muslims, not Tea Party members. ~Bob.)
Cyber War on Iran: the Siemens Connection
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/09/25/cyber-war-on-iran-the-siemens-connection/
Excerpt: While the boors and bores of the mainstream media continue to focus on the “crucial matters” of our time such as Stephen Colbert’s tedious appearance before Congress and whether a Delaware senatorial candidate spent two days as a witch in high school, news of real importance is breaking all around us. I am not just referring to the cataclysmic testimony by Chris Coates in front of the Civil Rights Commission on Friday, but to a yet bigger story with a potentially huge implications for geo-politics — the recent (and possibly ongoing) cyber attack on Iranian computers that may have temporarily crippled the nuclear capability (and who knows what else) of the totalitarian Islamic state. Yesterday, I wrote some preliminary words about this highly sophisticated attack by the so-called “Stuxnet” worm; today we learn the startling news the Iranians themselves have admitted that something serious has happened. Such admissions are certainly not common from the secretive state. From Asia Bizz: The Iranian Ministry has stated that some 30000 industrial computers have been infected by Stuxnet. One of the main operations done by Stuxnet is that it extracts vital information from these systems and then sends it somewhere abroad. Iran has termed this virus as a spy virus, as it is deploying vital data to other countries. On the other hand it is said, a similar attack has been reported from Iran’s latest nuclear power plant facility, but these reports have not yet been confirmed.
How Dems hope to sell 'broccoli'
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/how_dems_hope_to_sell_broccoli_ifSpUiwKK0LQIWlY1x7yrJ
Excerpt: It is a lawyers' adage: If you have the law on your side, argue the law; if you have the facts, argue the facts; if you have neither, pound the table. Forgive the Democrats for their table-pounding. They can't run on their record, which has two pillars. One is the stimulus that didn't stimulate as they said it would (or else unemployment wouldn't be above 8 percent). The report that the recession ended in June 2009 means the feeble recovery began before stimulus spending really started. The second pillar is the health-care legislation. It remains as unpopular as it was when the administration told Americans to pipe down and eat their broccoli. Unable to campaign retrospectively, Democrats also can't campaign prospectively: "Elect us and get more broccoli!" Hence the table-pounding: The Tea Party is a death panel for America's happiness. As the year began, we were warned that Tea Partiers wouldn't play nicely with others -- wouldn't abide by the mores and outcomes of the two-party competition. It is, however, some anti-Tea Party "moderates" who exemplify repulsive politics this year.
S.D. School District Distributes Guide to Help Illegal Alien Students Avoid Deportation
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/sep/25/debate-over-guide-immigrants-rights-during-raids-d/
Your tax dollars at work, protecting lawbreakers. ~Bob. Excerpt: Excerpt: A countywide public school network for at-risk children is encouraging teachers to address students’ concerns about immigration raids and deportations — an effort that’s receiving mixed reviews from law enforcement agencies. Police are objecting to one key element: an illustrated guide on how to protect yourself from raids by not saying too much, not carrying certain documents and not signing forms without consulting a lawyer. The guide, which was distributed to teachers and students at two recent events, depicts burly police officers in sunglasses and fear-stricken immigrants in handcuffs who refuse to give information before speaking to an attorney. It includes a wallet-sized “know your rights” card.
Ayodhya holy site crisis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11436552
A long Islamic record of building mosques on other religions’ holy sites, to crush them. See Temple Mount for more evidence. ~Bob. Excerpt: The religious site where the Babri mosque was destroyed in 1992 in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya has been a flashpoint between Hindus and Muslims for years. BBC News looks at the troubled history of the disputed holy site. 1528: A mosque is built on the site which some Hindus say marks the spot where one of the most revered deities in Hinduism, Lord Ram, was born. 1853: First recorded incidents of religious violence at the site. 1859: British colonial administration erects a fence to separate the places of worship, allowing the inner court to be used by Muslims and the outer court by Hindus.
Americans Still Cling to Ignorance
http://townhall.com/columnists/VictorDavisHanson/2010/09/30/americans_still_cling_to_ignorance
Excerpt: The bookish, twice-unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson once sighed that if most thinking people supported him, it still wouldn't be enough in America because, "I need a majority." For some reason, Democrats have chosen to follow the disastrous model of Stevenson and not that of feisty man-of-the-people Missourian Harry Truman -- though the former nearly wrecked the party and the latter got elected. Former President Jimmy Carter likewise seems to feel that he's still too smart for us. Carter, who turns 86 on Friday, is hitting the news shows to explain why he remains America's "superior" ex-president -- and why more than 30 years ago he was so successful yet so underappreciated as our chief executive. Most Americans instead remember a very different President Carter who finished his single term with 18 percent inflation, 18 percent interest rates, 11 percent unemployment, long gas lines, and a world in chaos from hostage-taking in Teheran and Soviet communist aggression in Afghanistan and Central America. Now, John Kerry -- who failed to win the presidency in 2004 and recently tried to avoid state sales taxes on his new $7 million yacht -- is voicing similar frustrations about Americans' inability to fathom what their betters are trying to do for them. He is furious that an unsophisticated electorate might not return congressional Democratic majorities in 2010. Kerry laments that, "We have an electorate that doesn't always pay that much attention to what's going on." Instead it falls for "a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what's happening." … In the 2008 campaign, Michelle Obama at one point said of her husband's burden, "Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics." That sense of intellectual superiority was channeled by Barack Obama himself when he later tried to explain why his message was not resonating with less astute rural Pennsylvanians: "And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." (Actually, Thomas Sowell reports that Stevenson wasn’t as “bookish” as Truman. “Adlai Stevenson was certainly regarded as an intellectual by intellectuals in the 1950s. But, half a century later, facts paint a very different picture. Historian Michael Beschloss, among others, has noted that Stevenson “could go quite happily for months or years without picking up a book.” But Stevenson had the airs of an intellectual — the form, rather than the substance. What is more telling, form was enough to impress the intellectuals, not only then but even now, years after the facts have been revealed, though apparently not to Mr. Kristof. That is one of many reasons why intellectuals are not taken as seriously by others as they take themselves. As for reading the classics, President Harry Truman, whom no one thought of as an intellectual, was a voracious reader of heavyweight stuff like Thucydides and read Cicero in the original Latin. When Chief Justice Carl Vinson quoted in Latin, Truman was able to correct him. Yet intellectuals tended to think of the unpretentious and plain-spoken Truman as little more than a country bumpkin. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/226296/intellectuals/thomas-sowell)
AP Sources: Emanuel to resign as White House chief of staff Friday, to begin Chicago mayor bid
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093001036.html?wpisrc=nl_natlalert
We gotta get out of this place. ~Bob.
Obama’s Generals
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2010/09/29/obamas-generals/
Excerpt: Obama had to do this 18-month surge just to demonstrate, in effect, that it couldn’t be done . . . the president had treated the military as another political constituency that had to be accommodated.” –LTG Douglas Lute, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan as quoted in the Washington Post .The past three days the Washington Post has been serializing the new Bob Woodward book, “Obama’s Wars,” on the front page of that paper. Though I have been stunned by what I’ve read I haven’t been surprised. That a feckless and un-serious man when elected president would pursue a war in a feckless and un-serious way should surprise no one. What has left me stunned is the fact that Obama never seriously considered whether winning the war in Afghanistan (or sealing the victory in Iraq) was in the national interests of the United States. His lodestar was rather an arbitrary and precipitous withdrawal date in July 2011. Here you have it in black and white. The surge of troops into Afghanistan was below the number recommended by his military advisers. Obama did not support the surge, he was fixated on an early withdrawal, but he lacked the courage to make that decision. How a president can continue to waste the lives of young Americans in a war he neither believes in or cares about is beyond my comprehension. Worse, no one is surprised that Obama would do this. Anti-Americanism is seems to have been programmed into his DNA, to the point where everyone just expects him to act this way. But that isn’t what this story is about. It’s about the people around him, including our most senior uniformed leaders - men who know better - who have allowed this to happen. (So a General says the troops are dying to prove that liberals are correct that we can’t win? ~Bob)
What did you “dabble” in?
Pushing the statement by Christine O’Donnell that in high school she dabbled in witchcraft (apparently the major news of the week) the cartoonists are having fun. Bill Clinton: “I dabbled on a blue dress.” Michael Moore: “I dabbled in cheeseburgers.” I’m sure my readers can think of more (try to keep them clean) to post as comments. Like the following. Charles Rangel: I dabbled in tax evasion.” Maxine Waters: I dabble in political intervention in my husbands banks. Alexi Giannoulias: I dabbled in loans to crooks. Barack Obama: I dabbled in Christianity. And Islam. Obama’s cabinet: I dabbled in paying taxes.
If Terrorism is Not a Muslim Threat, What About Muslim Violence?
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7520/pub_detail.asp
Excerpt: A study (pdf) from Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill maintains that the terrorist threat posed by radical Islam has been greatly exaggerated. The study captured front page headlines in Arab News and newspapers throughout the Muslim world. Charles Kurzman, one of the co-authors of the study, maintains that fewer than three dozen murders have been committed by American Muslims on American soil. What Kurzman fails to take into account are the number of murders committed by non-American Muslims on American soil and the homicides perpetuated by members of the Nation of Islam. The actual figures show that Islamophobia is a justifiable stance since Muslims have been responsible for the murders of 5,000 Americans in the past fifty years. This number includes the nearly 3,000 Americans killed on 9/11 and the hundreds of victims of the so-called Zebra killings that took place in the 1970s.
Thailand, Islamic rebels disguised as policemen fire on crowd: 5 dead and 3 injured
http://www.asianews.asia.com/news-en/Thailand,-Islamic-rebels-disguised-as-policemen-fire-on-crowd:-5-dead-and-3-injured-19582.html
Didn’t get the memo. Five years from now they’ll demand to build a mosque there to “promote peace. ~Bob.
Ali? Bah!
http://www.steynonline.com/content/blogcategory/20/203/
Excerpt: Despite being a bit of an old showbiz queen, I’m not much for the huggy-kissy photo wall of me sharing a joke with various luvvies. I make an exception on the bureau behind my desk for a shot of yours truly and a beautiful woman, Somali by birth, Dutch by citizenship, at a beachfront bar in Malibu at sunset. I like the picture because, while I look rather bleary with a few too many chins, my companion is bright-eyed with a huge smile on her face and having a grand old time—grand, that is, because of its very normality: a crappy bar, drinks with cocktail umbrellas, a roomful of blithely ignorant California hedonists who’ll all be going back home at the end of the evening to Dancing With the Stars or Conan O’Brien or some other amusement. Ayaan Hirsi Ali can’t lead that life. She lives under armed guard and was forced to abandon the Netherlands because quite a lot of people want to kill her. And not in the desultory behead-the-enemies-of-Islam you-will-die-infidel pro forma death-threats-R-us way that many of us have perforce gotten used to in recent years: her great friend and professional collaborator was murdered in the streets of Amsterdam by a man who shot him eight times, attempted to decapitate him, and then drove into his chest two knives, pinning to what was left of him a five-page note pledging to do the same to her. What would you do in those circumstances? Ayaan and I had repaired to that third-rate bar after a day-long conference on Islam, jihad, free speech and whatnot. That’s usually where I run into her, whether in Malibu or at the Carlton Club in London or at a less illustrious venue. Would you be doing that with a price on your head? Or would you duck out of sight, lie low, change your name, move to New Zealand, and hope one day to get your life back? After the threats against the Comedy Central show South Park the other week, Ms. Hirsi Ali turned up on CNN to say that the best defence against Islamic intimidation is for us all to stand together and thereby “share the risk.” But, around the world, every single translator of her books has insisted on total anonymity. When push comes to shove, very few are willing to share the risk. The British historian Andrew Roberts calls her “the bravest woman I know.” I would say she is not only the bravest but also, given her circumstances, the most optimistic. I have an unbounded admiration for her personally, but a not insignificant difference philosophically, of which more momentarily. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s great cause is women’s liberation. Unfortunately for her, the women she wants to liberate are Muslim, so she gets minimal support and indeed a ton of hostility from Western feminists who have reconciled themselves, consciously or otherwise, to the two-tier sisterhood: when it comes to clitoridectomies, forced marriages, honour killings, etc., multiculturalism trumps feminism. Liberal men are, if anything, even more opposed. She long ago got used to the hectoring TV interviewer, from Avi Lewis on the CBC a while back to Tavis Smiley on PBS just the other day, insisting that say what you like about Islam but everyone knows that Christians are just as backward and violent, if not more so. The media left spends endless hours and most of its interminable awards ceremonies congratulating itself on its courage, on “speaking truth to power,” the bravery of dissent and all the rest, but faced with a pro-gay secular black feminist who actually lives it they frost up in nothing flat.
Islamophilia: Generating a Social Disease
http://shawmut.blogspot.com/2010/09/islamophilia-social-disease.html
Excerpt: There are many afflictions upon mankind that can be identified in qualified terms; corruption in politics, nihilism in philosophy, behavior in culture and everything from murder to simony in religion. Collectively, those areas of affliction could complement the fullness of society. Today, we are looking at a predatory affliction that I see as a social affliction; a social disease, if you will. I call it Islamophilia. Given the ardor in negotiating against any examination of Islamic development, I look at this situation as a new chic - among some it has even become a radical chic; not unlike body piercing or tattoos, or the hirsuteness of the Sixties, and I term it impassioned Islamophilia. Let me emphasize I’m looking at its goal of totality. Now, the last thing I’m going to do is look at Western History and let it off with five “Our Fathers” and five “Hail Mary’s”. But before historical mavens get all excited, let me reminds us all that we have labored and campaigned to exorcise our demons; and we do yet. Clio, that Muse of History, bears a pretty hefty conscience. And, before I sound as though I’m going to lecture, let me advise you, I have no such license. In recent years we have been issued by the victim industry a new term: “Islamophobia” It’s been taken as the new secular sin. It is hurled about when one merely questions the appropriateness of the application of anything that is even remotely associated with Muslims as pertains to politics (world, national or provincial), philosophical, cultural or religious (again, I admit to my broad brush of the social). Even questioning text-books, mandatory diet inclusions to zoning ordinances in which the slightest inference of an Islamic factor is harshly challenged. It’s as though a fire was set.
I see white people
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=19744
Excerpt: I thought the University of Wisconsin was a major photo-op. Where are the photos — vistas of hopeful, youthful faces? There’s a tiny thumbnail here in the NYT. Help me find some pictures or I’m going with the theory — offered by those who looked at my pictures — that the crowd was — as all those news media people loved to say about the Tea Party rallies — overwhelmingly white. My pictures were taken on Bascom Hill and the Memorial Union Terrace — overflow areas with piped in sound/video. I did not go through security and into the Library Mall area where the President could be seen in person, and I thought we were going to get some grand wide-angle shots of the President and his enthusiasts.
IL Rep. Schakowsky: The ‘Right’ to Abortion Creates ‘Obligation’ For Tax-Payers to Fund Them
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=19721
Excerpt: Rep. Jan Schakowsky says, “The right to abortion creates an obligation for taxpayers to fund them.” Schakowsky also backed the assertion that abortion is safer than childbirth. (My Congress Critter. But I think the name is spelled “Shesacommie.” So the right to own guns thus creates a government obligation to buy me one? I’ll take an M-14 please. ~Bob)
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