Smarter Security, not More Money

The Heritage Foundation published an article this morning regarding how our bloated Federal bureaucracy is responding to the recent foiled terror attack. Read the article; here's a tidbit from it:

"The Flight 253 attack was the 28th foiled terror plot against the United States since 9/11. What is notable is that of the 28 failed plots, 26 were stopped by intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies. Only two were stopped by citizens on the scene - Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in 2009, and Richard Reid in 2001. In both these cases, America just got lucky - the plots were clumsy and the passengers and crew responded bravely and quickly. There are many valuable lessons to be learned from the failed Christmas attack on a Detroit-bound airliner; throwing more money at airline security is not one of them."

"What Were You Thinking?"

Tiger and Barack

Lisa Schiffren wrote an article on the American Thinker back on December 8 titled "Tiger, Barack, and the Law of Transitivity." It's quite interesting in its premise: the squeaky-clean image of Tiger Woods was a creation of businesses interested in extracting money from the public, and is very similar to the image created for Barack Obama leading up to the election of 2008. In both cases the image that was created, and widely believed, was significantly different from the personal reality of the individual. Give it a read.

"If I were watching the public's disgust with the newly revealed Tiger Woods from an office in the West Wing, I'd be concerned. Because Barack Obama is about as completely manufactured a political character as this nation has seen. His meteoric rise, without the inconvenience of a public record or accomplishments, and the public's willing suspension of critical evaluation of his résumé allowed his handlers and the media to project whatever they wanted to on his unfurrowed brow."

"What Were You Thinking?"

Hentoff: America under Obama

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute conducts an interview with Nat Hentoff, of whom Whitehead says, "he has angered nearly every political faction and remains one of a few who has stuck to his principles through his many years of work, regardless of the trouble it stirred up."

Hentoff speaks to many of the issues of the day, including government health care, unemployment, public education, and the Fourth Amendment.

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An Overdue Debunking

Cal Thomas's column in today's paper carried the title indicated above. In the archives, it's titled "The Flathead Society." Either way, if you have an interest in joining the debate over global warming you would do well to give it a read.

Cal cites an essay by Dr. Leonard Weinstein, a NASA research scientist with over 30 years of experience.

Attack on America Redux

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American History, as mis-told by Harry Reid

There's no shortage of lunacy and outright lies coming from the left side of the political spectrum. Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev) recently mis-represented the women's suffrage and emancipation movements as having been blocked by Republicans. In fact, it was members of his own party that blocked and obstructed such advances.

Read John Fund's story in the Wall Street journal, setting the record straight.

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Mr Independant

Mr. Lieberman notes that the public option serves no other purpose: "It doesn't help one poor person get insurance who doesn't have it now. It doesn't compel one insurance company to provide insurance to somebody who has an illness. And . . . it doesn't do anything to reduce the cost of insurance."

Mr. Lieberman dismisses Democratic arguments that it is necessary to keep insurers honest. "Sometimes the private sector does things that are wrong, and when they do, you regulate—sometimes you litigate," he says. "But never in the history of America . . . have we tried to keep one industry honest by having government go into that business to compete with the industry."

Read Joe Lieberman's article in the Wall Street Journal.

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Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation

A message from Abraham Lincoln, delivered on October 3, 1863...

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

 

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

 

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of our precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

 

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

 

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

 

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

A far cry from the current administration.

 

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Mindless Mantra of "Diversity"

Read what Ann Coulter has to say about diversity at WorldNetDaily. Here's a blurb to whet your appetite:

"Never in recorded history has diversity been anything but a problem. Look at Ireland with its Protestant and Catholic populations, Canada with its French and English populations, Israel with its Jewish and Palestinian populations.

Or consider the warring factions in India, Sri Lanka, China, Iraq, Czechoslovakia (until it happily split up), the Balkans and Chechnya. Also look at the festering hotbeds of tribal warfare - I mean the beautiful mosaics - in Third World hellholes like Afghanistan, Rwanda and South Central L.A.

'Diversity' is a difficulty to be overcome, not an advantage to be sought. True, America does a better job than most at accommodating a diverse population. We also do a better job at curing cancer and containing pollution. But no one goes around mindlessly exclaiming: 'Cancer is a strength!' 'Pollution is our greatest asset!' "

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The Winds of Change

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Reagan's Role

This morning from the Heritage Foundation:

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin and said: "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

On November 9, 1989, just two years after Reagan made his Brandenburg Gate speech, the people of Germany did tear down "this wall" and in so doing they freed hundreds of millions of people from the tyranny of communism. Reagan by no means single-handily brought about the fall of the Berlin Wall, but his leadership against despotism was widely recognized by the victims of communism. When he visited Poland in 1990, a dissident leader presented Reagan with a sword explaining: "I am giving you this saber for helping us to chop off the head of communism."

But the leftists in America do not want us to remember Reagan’s role in history. That is why President Barack Obama (the same man who found time to jet to Copenhagen at the drop of a rumor that his presence could win the Olympics for his hometown of Chicago) could not be bothered to attend the 20th anniversary of the wall’s fall last night. Instead, President Obama taped a video message that completely failed to mention Reagan or British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

More than petty partisan slights are at stake here. President Obama’s refusal to recognize the role President Reagan’s and Prime Minister Thatcher’s leadership played in defeating despotism goes to the core of Obama’s foreign policy priorities. Heritage scholar Nile Gardiner explains:

Barack Obama simply does not view the world as Reagan did, in terms of good versus evil, as a world divided between the forces of freedom on one side and totalitarianism on the other. For the Obama administration the advancement of human rights and individual liberty on the world stage is a distinctly low priority, as we have seen with its engagement strategy towards the likes of Iran, Burma, Sudan, Venezuela and Russia.

We commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall to celebrate the collapse of communism, to honor those who died resisting communism, and to resolve that never again will peoples and nations allow so evil a tyranny to terrorize the world.

Yet, at a time when the United States currently faces challenges as complicated as those confronted by Reagan (war in Afghanistan, the global fight against Islamist terrorism, the rise of a nuclear-armed Iran) Obama is bent on apologizing for our nation’s actions, betraying Cold War allies, and dithering on troop deployments.

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November 7, 2009: a Day that will Live in Infamy

You can find a link to the text of H.R 3962, the Pelosi health-care bill passed by the House of Representatives, HERE. You can read a short summary of what's in those 1,900+ pages, by Betsy McCaughey at Wall Street Journal, HERE.

If you think people ought to be thrown in jail for not buying insurance, you'll probably love the bill. If you think old folks are getting off easy today, you'll love what's gonna happen to them when this bill goes into effect. If you think that all the uninsured will get free health care, you're sadly mistaken. If you think that you personally will benefit, you're probably wrong about that, too.

"Every Medical Insurance Decision will be subject to Rationing by Politics!"

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WSJ on ObamaCare

If you're the sort of person that wants to know what's going on in the debate over health-care reform, you might consider looking at this Wall Street Journal web page. They have links in one place on many (all?) of the articles they've published on this issue.

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'Obama Is Average'

The German news magazine 'Der Spiegel' presents an interview with noted conservative collumnist Charles Krauthammer.  Here's a teaser where Dr. K offers an opinion of Obama's foreign policy:

SPIEGEL: You famously coined the term "Reagan Doctrine" to describe Ronald Reagan's foreign policy. What is the "Obama Doctrine?"

 

Krauthammer: I would say his vision of the world appears to me to be so naïve that I am not even sure he's able to develop a doctrine. He has a view of the world as regulated by self-enforcing international norms, where the peace is kept by some kind of vague international consensus, something called the international community, which to me is a fiction, acting through obviously inadequate and worthless international agencies. I wouldn't elevate that kind of thinking to a doctrine because I have too much respect for the word doctrine.

 

SPIEGEL: Are you saying that diplomacy always fails?

 

Krauthammer: No, foolishness does. Perhaps when he gets nowhere on Iran, nowhere with North Korea, when he gets nothing from the Russians in return for what he did to the Poles and the Czechs, gets nowhere in the Middle East peace talks -- maybe at that point he'll begin to rethink whether the world really runs by international norms, consensus, and sweetness and light, or whether it rests on the foundation of American and Western power that, in the final analysis, guarantees peace.

 

SPIEGEL: That is the cynical approach.

 

Krauthammer: The realist approach. Henry Kissinger once said that peace can be achieved only one of two ways: hegemony or balance of power. Now that is real realism. What the Obama administration pretends is realism is naïve nonsense.

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Pay Cuts!

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Black Scholars speak to Our Times

Allan Erickson, on his "Goodness World Life Blog," recently posted a letter written shortly after the 2008 presidential election by Dr. Anne Wortham, an associate professor of sociology at Illinois State University.

 

Read Dr. Wortham's letter here: http://allanerickson.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/two-black-scholars-speak-to-our-times/ 

This blog post also includes the text of a speech by Justice Janice Rogers Brown given to the Federalist Society at the University of Chicago back in 2000.  Also included are links to relevant articles by columnists Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Larry Elder.

 

Here's a quote from Justice Brown to whet your interest:

         "Writing 50 years ago, F.A. Hayek warned us that a centrally planned economy is 'The Road to Serfdom.' He was right, of course; but the intervening years have shown us that there are many other roads to serfdom. In fact, it now appears that human nature is so constituted that, as in the days of empire, all roads led to Rome; in the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery. And we no longer find slavery abhorrent. We embrace it. We demand more. Big government is not just the opiate of the masses. It is the opiate. The drug of choice for multinational corporations and single moms; for regulated industries and rugged Midwestern farmers and militant senior citizens.

         It is my thesis today that the sheer tenacity of the collectivist impulse - whether you call it socialism or communism or altruism - has changed not only the meaning of our words, but the meaning of the Constitution, and the character of our people."

Here's a quote from Dr. Sowell regarding the government-based health-care/medical insurance debate:

         "Politicians are already one of the main reasons why medical insurance is so expensive. Insurance is designed to cover risks but politicians are in the business of distributing largesse. Nothing is easier for politicians than to mandate things that insurance companies must cover, without the slightest regard for how such additional coverage will raise the cost of insurance.

         If insurance covered only those things that most people are most concerned about-- the high cost of a major medical expense-- the price would be much lower than it is today, with politicians piling on mandate after mandate."

You can find the Thomas Sowell archives here, the Walter Williams archives here, and the Larry Elder archives here.  I commend them to your reading if you would understand more of the direction in which our country seems headed.

 

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Cash for ... Golf Carts?

Did you like the "Cash for Clunkers" deal that Congress came up with for us?  Did you replace your old car with a new one?  Did you know that a golf cart qualifies as an "Electric Car" under new government regulations and that you can get a tax credit when you buy one?  Just one more example of the Unintended Consequences that happen over and over again when Big Government tries to use taxpayer money to curry favor.  Is this really the bunch you want in charge of your health care?

 

Read the Wall Street Journal article here.  Then go out and find yourself an "electric car."

 

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Obamacare and Abortion

In Thursday's article, the fourth in a week-long series on "Obamacare," the Heritage Foundation discussed what some might call dishonesty coming from the White House.

 

While Obama has made public promises -- "Under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions" -- no specific language has been put into the legislation currently being considered.  White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has been less than forthcoming on the issue.  a quote from the article:

"Conservatives introduced amendments in all five committee markups (three in the House and two in the Senate) that would have specifically prohibited federal funds from being used to cover abortion. None of them passed. Worse, the "compromise" the White House has adopted is an amendment sponsored by Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) who has a 100% pro-abortion voting record according to the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). Not only does the Capps amendment allow for federal money to subsidize abortions in private plans and mandate federal funding for abortions in the public option (this according to FactCheck.org), it also requires that at least one insurance plan cover abortion in every geographical region in the country."

Friday's article discusses another ramification of the so-called health-care reform, the way that such reform will be implemented.  They expect to reduce the number of uninsured by 29 million, but the devil is, as always, in the details.  Here's a quote:

"..of those 29 million with new insurance coverage, almost half (14 million), will get their coverage through the welfare programs Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).  That is equivalent to adding every resident of Ohio and Nevada to the welfare rolls.

 

In other words, for half of those Americans who are being promised health reform, they are going to be stunned to find themselves in a welfare office applying for Medicaid. Under the current baselines for Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), there will be 76 million individuals served by these programs for at least some part of the year in 2019. If the SFC proposal becomes law, the number on Medicaid/SCHIP will top 90 million. So why do Obamacare supporters want to put 90 million Americans on the welfare rolls? It is cheaper than providing them with real quality health care."

This is nothing less than cost-shifting, plain and simple.  Another quote:

Medicaid was originally created to provide access to health care for families on welfare. Medicaid pays providers 20-25 percent less than does the private sector, forcing doctors and hospitals to subsidize Medicaid through lower rates. This deters doctors and hospitals from participating in the program, creating a lack of access that itself is a form of rationing.

"What Were You Thinking?"

 

The Cost of Health-care Reform 2 & 3

You can find subsequent parts of The Heritage Foundation's week-long series on the costs of health-care reform at their blog, The Foundry.  They have an entire category of health care, with articles they have generated as well as links to enough other sources to give the interested reader an admirable breadth of information on the issues involved with the current debate.

 

Part Two is titled "Obamacare sends Deficits Off Cliff" and quotes an article at the Washington Post titled "Health Reform Shell Game." The Post article cites "smoke and mirrors" in the Baucus bill that you should find interesting. Neither are long reads, both are well-researched and have enough evidential citations to satisfy even the most discriminating (or biased) reader.

 

Part Three is titled "It's All Downhill From Here."  Here's a quote:

"The scariest part about yesterday's Senate Finance Committee vote passing its version of Obamacare, is not what is in their bill (to the extent that it even exists), but that the Finance Committee bill promises to be the high water mark for "bipartisanship" in health care reform.

 

Now all of the other bills will be merged together behind the closed doors. All the bills are fundamentally flawed and will only get worse as the leaders in the House and Senate have to commit to actual details."

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The Baucus Bill

The Senate Finance Committee has passed chairman Max Baucus's pet bill out to conference. Now a small group of politicians will try to bring about a resolution between this and HR 3200 and whatever ideas that Obama and his White House cabal see fit to bring to the table.  What do these proposals portend for the people of the country?

 

Here's a quote for your consideration:

"Remember when health-care reform was supposed to make life better for the middle class? That dream began to unravel this past summer when Congress proposed a bill that failed to include any competition-based reforms that would actually bend the curve of health-care costs. It fell apart completely when Democrats began papering over the gaping holes their plan would rip in the federal budget.

 

As it now stands, the plan proposed by Democrats and the Obama administration would not only fail to reduce the cost burden on middle-class families, it would make that burden significantly worse."

Here's another line from this Wall Street Journal editorial:

"The Joint Committee on Taxation indicates that 87% of the burden would fall on Americans making less than $200,000, and more than half on those earning under $100,000.

 

Industry fees are even worse because Democrats chose to make these fees nondeductible. This means that insurance companies will have to raise premiums significantly just to break even. American families will bear a burden even greater than the $130 billion in fees that the bill intends to collect. According to my analysis, premiums will rise by as much as $200 billion over the next 10 years - and 90% will again fall on the middle class."

It is amazing to me that seemingly intelligent people will ignore evidence such as this and still believe that they will benefit from this massive  new entitlement program.  Read the entire article here.

 

"What Were You Thinking?"