Friends hail police Sgt. Kimberly Munley for taking down Fort Hood gunman, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan By Rich Schapiro

Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/11/06/2009-11-06_police_sgt_kimberly_munley_credited_with_ending_fort_hood_gunman_maj_nidal_malik.html

November 6th 2009

Police Sgt. Kimberly Munley is credited with ending the Fort Hood mass shooting before even more people were shot."

The hero cop who ended the bloody rampage at Fort Hood by pumping four bullets into the crazed gunman even though she was wounded is known for her toughness, friends say.

Before relocating to Texas, civilian police Sgt. Kimberly Munley spent about five years as a cop in North Carolina where she forged a reputation as a no-nonsense officer.

"I'd like to say I'm surprised, but I'm really not," said close friend Drew Peterson, 27.

"She was born and bred to be a police officer. If you were ever to be in a fight, she'd be the first person to stand up next to you and back you up. She's a tough cookie."

Munley's toughness and grace under pressure were on display Thursday when she and her partner responded within three minutes of reported gunfire, said Army Lt. Gen. Bob Cone.

Munley, who had been trained in active-response tactics, rushed into the building and confronted the shooter as he was turning a corner, Cone said.

"It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer," Cone said.

Munley was only a few feet from Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan when she opened fire.

Wounded in the exchange of bullets, the 34-year-old Munley was reported in stable condition at a local hospital.

In a posting on her Twitter page before the shooting, she wrote: "I live a good life....a hard one, but I go to sleep peacefully @ night knowing that I may have made a difference in someone's life."

Munley's brother Daniel Barbour told ABC News that his sister had been shot three times in the hand and the leg.
One of the bullets pierced an artery, requiring her to undergo surgery Friday.

The diminutive Munley - she stands 5-foot-4 and weighs about 120 pounds - served as a cop in Wrightsville Beach,
N.C., before she moved to Texas to enlist in the military, friends said.

She is married with two daughters and is no longer in the armed forces.

"She's the happiest, sweetest, most fun-loving girl you'd ever want to be friends with - and never want to cross," Peterson said.

The hero cop spent Thursday night phoning fellow officers to let them know she was fine and to find out about casualties in the attack - the deadliest ever on a military base in the U.S., Cone said.

Cone said Munley's aggressive response training taught her that "if you act aggressively to take out a shooter you will have less fatalities."

"She walked up and engaged him," he said. He praised her as "one of our most impressive young police officers."

10 Failed Doomsday Predictions By Benjamin Radford

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/10faileddoomsdaypredictions

Nov 4, 2009

With the upcoming disaster film "2012" and the current hype about Mayan calendars and doomsday predictions, it seems like a good time to put such notions in context.


Most prophets of doom come from a religious perspective, though the secular crowd has caused its share of scares as well. One thing the doomsday scenarios tend to share in common: They don't come to pass.


Here are 10 that didn't pan out, so far:


The Prophet Hen of Leeds, 1806


History has countless examples of people who have proclaimed that the return of Jesus Christ is imminent, but perhaps there has never been a stranger messenger than a hen in the English town of Leeds in 1806. It seems that a hen began laying eggs on which the phrase "Christ is coming" was written. As news of this miracle spread, many people became convinced that doomsday was at hand - until a curious local actually watched the hen laying one of the prophetic eggs and discovered someone had hatched a hoax.


The Millerites, April 23, 1843


A New England farmer named William Miller, after several years of very careful study of his Bible, concluded that God's chosen time to destroy the world could be divined from a strict literal interpretation of scripture. As he explained to anyone who would listen, the world would end some time between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. He preached and published enough to eventually lead thousands of followers (known as Millerites) who decided that the actual date was April 23, 1843. Many sold or gave away their possessions, assuming they would not be needed; though when April 23 arrived (but Jesus didn't) the group eventually disbanded-some of them forming what is now the Seventh Day Adventists.


Mormon Armageddon, 1891 or earlier


Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, called a meeting of his church leaders in February 1835 to tell them that he had spoken to God recently, and during their conversation he learned that Jesus would return within the next 56 years, after which the End Times would begin promptly.


Halley's Comet, 1910


In 1881, an astronomer discovered through spectral analysis that comet tails include a deadly gas called cyanogen (related, as the name imples, to cyanide). This was of only passing interest until someone realized that Earth would pass through the tail of Halley's comet in 1910. Would everyone on the planet be bathed in deadly toxic gas? That was the speculation reprinted on the front pages of "The New York Times" and other newspapers, resulting in a widespread panic across the United States and abroad. Finally even-headed scientists explained that there was nothing to fear.


Pat Robertson, 1982


In May 1980, televangelist and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson startled and alarmed many when - contrary to Matthew 24:36 ("No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven...") he informed his "700 Club" TV show audience around the world that he knew when the world would end. "I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world," Robertson said.


Heaven's Gate, 1997


When comet Hale-Bopp appeared in 1997, rumors surfaced that an alien spacecraft was following the comet - covered up, of course, by NASA and the astronomical community. Though the claim was refuted by astronomers (and could be refuted by anyone with a good telescope), the rumors were publicized on Art Bell's paranormal radio talk show "Coast to Coast AM." These claims inspired a San Diego UFO cult named Heaven's Gate to conclude that the world would end soon. The world did indeed end for 39 of the cult members, who committed suicide on March 26, 1997.


Nostradamus, August 1999


The heavily obfuscated and metaphorical writings of Michel de Nostrdame have intrigued people for over 400 years. His writings, the accuracy of which relies heavily upon very flexible interpretations, have been translated and re-translated in dozens of different versions. One of the most famous quatrains read, "The year 1999, seventh month / From the sky will come great king of terror." Many Nostradamus


devotees grew concerned that this was the famed prognosticator's vision of Armageddon.

Y2K, Jan. 1, 2000

As the last century drew to a close, many people grew concerned that computers might bring about doomsday. The problem, first noted in the early 1970s, was that many computers would not be able to tell the difference between 2000 and 1900 dates. No one was really sure what that would do, but many suggested catastrophic problems ranging from vast blackouts to nuclear holocaust. Gun sales jumped and survivalists prepared to live in bunkers, but the new millennium began with only a few glitches.


May 5, 2000

In case the Y2K bug didn't do us in, global catastrophe was assured by Richard Noone, author of the 1997 book "5/5/2000 Ice: the Ultimate Disaster." According to Noone, the Antarctic ice mass would be three miles thick by May 5, 2000 - a date in which the planets would be aligned in the heavens, somehow resulting in a global icy death (or at least a lot of book sales). Perhaps global warming kept the ice age at bay.


God's Church Ministry, Fall 2008

According to God's Church minister Ronald Weinland, the end times are upon us-- again. His 2006 book "2008: God's Final Witness" states that hundreds of millions of people will die, and by the end of 2006, "there will be a maximum time of two years remaining before the world will be plunged into the worst time of all human history. By the fall of 2008, the United States will have collapsed as a world power, and no longer exist as an independent nation." As the book notes, "Ronald Weinland places his reputation on the line as the end-time prophet of God."

Video: 2012 Cataclysm or Ancient Myth?


Benjamin Radford is managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer science magazine. His books, films, and other projects can be found on his website. His Bad Science column appears regularly on LiveScience.

Let states lead the way: Washington's one-size-fits-all reform won't work By Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/05/AR2009110504328.html

November 6, 2009

Congress is on the verge of enacting the largest unfunded mandate in American history. At a time when most states are struggling with rising unemployment, declining tax revenue and the worst national economic climate in 30 years, Congress is demonstrating that it is more out of touch than ever.

The Democratic health "reform" bill in the Senate would require states to expand Medicaid to include all people earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or $29,327 for a family of four. House Democrats want to require expansion to 150 percent of the poverty level, or $33,075 for a family of four. Even Texas, which has a balanced budget and nearly $9 billion in its rainy-day fund, isn't prepared to absorb this type of blow.

Complaints from majorities of Republican and Democratic governors alike continue to fall on deaf ears. Congress seems intent on forcing a one-size-fits-all mandate on states, some of which actually have solutions to repair their health-care systems that Washington is preventing them from trying.

Texas, for example, has adopted approaches to controlling health-care costs while improving choice, advancing quality of care and expanding coverage. Consider the successful 2003 tort reform. Fewer frivolous lawsuits have attracted record numbers of doctors to the state as medical malpractice insurance premiums dropped by half. Christus Health, a large Catholic nonprofit system with a significant presence in Texas, spent about $100 million on liability defense payments in 2003. Last year, Christus spent $2.3 million on such payments. Much of that savings has gone into expanding health-care services in low-income neighborhoods.

You might think Washington would be curious about plans to provide more low-income Texans with insurance, reduce expensive emergency-room visits for basic care and make it easier to buy into employer-sponsored insurance. Unfortunately, Washington has failed for 18 months to give Texas permission to use Medicaid dollars for these policies.

Historically, the federal government has paid an average of 57 percent of state Medicaid costs. In a transparent attempt to bribe governors and state legislatures into accepting 15 million to 20 million new people nationwide onto Medicaid rolls, Congress is proposing a series of additional subsidies to states to cover 90 percent of the costs of the newly mandated populations. In true Washington form, these handouts would be debt-financed, through the generosity of foreign bankers, to be paid back by future generations of American taxpayers.

Expanding the Medicaid program in Texas alone to include an additional 2 million people would cost $20 billion to $30 billion over the next 10 years. Regardless of how that cost is shared between the federal and state governments down the road, we believe that level of new mandated spending is grossly unacceptable.

Even more stunning than this fiscal irresponsibility is Congress's disregard for the quality of the Medicaid program and the well-being of the people in it. Medicaid is the lowest payer in the health-care system. It reimburses physicians 20 to 30 percent less than even Medicare, which pays costs at a much lower rate than do private insurers. If a doctor or hospital is facing bills, staff salaries and medical malpractice premiums, it is obvious which patients will get preference.

We note with concern that the Government Accountability Office reported in January that Medicaid made an estimated $32.7 billion in improper payments in 2007, equal to a full 10 percent of the program. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) pointed out that the average improper payment rate for non-health government programs is 3.9 percent. He introduced an amendment in the Senate Finance Committee that would have prevented expansions of Medicaid until the secretary of health and human services could certify that its improper payment rate was equivalent to that of non-health programs, but that amendment failed on a party-line vote. The rate of improper payments needs to be addressed.

The Democratic health-care proposals do nothing to expand choice, lower costs and empower patients. They would add to, without reforming, bulky, overpriced programs that would in turn add to our already crushing burden of national debt. Reckless expansion would ultimately reduce the quality of U.S. medical care.

Such tragedies can be averted if the powers-that-be in Washington set aside their devotion to centrally planned, debt-financed, one-size-fits-all solutions and work cooperatively with those laboratories of innovation known as states. Otherwise, we'll end up with a one-size-hurts-all situation.

Newt Gingrich, founder of the Center for Health Transformation, was speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. Rick Perry is governor of Texas.

Health Reform Faces Moment Of Untruth By Sen. Tom Coburn and Rep. Paul Ryan

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=511167

11/03/2009

As Congress works to "make history" with health care reform, the American people have a far more sensible ambition for policymakers: get a grip on our unsustainable fiscal course.

By 2-to-1, Americans continue to believe that Congress should address the deficit first, then health care. Yet the best that Congress has come up with to address our entitlement and fiscal crisis is to create a costly new open-ended entitlement.

The American people suspect what we know to be true: Congress really has no idea how to pay for "reform," or anything else for that matter. Fiscal restraint remains off the agenda, while there is of course the desire to appear to be fiscally responsible.

Behind closed doors, negotiators have been performing budget gymnastics. House and Senate leaders have been fudging their cost estimates to meet the president's demand of not adding a dime to the deficit.

For instance, the bill won't be fully implemented until 2013, but tax hikes will take effect immediately. This gimmick will produce 10 years of revenues but only seven years of cost. Once fully implemented, however, the plan will cost nearly $2 trillion over 10 years — double the $900 billion touted as a passing grade from the Congressional Budget Office.

Still, congressional leaders are sticking to their talking point. "We're very excited by the CBO scores," Speaker Nancy Pelosi said gleefully when the plan's Enron-style accounting produced a positive score. The CBO, however, is less excited about Congress' fiscal management. As it recently told Congress, "Slowing the growth rate of outlays for Medicare and Medicaid is the central long-term challenge for federal fiscal policy."

President Obama seems to agree. He recently said: "If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close."

He's right, which makes the fiscal irresponsibility of the "reform" process all the more breathtaking. The current bills dump half of the uninsured in Medicaid, create new federal handouts paid for by taxpayers, and build on the unsustainable Medicare status quo while cutting what's working best in Medicare.

Budget gimmicks are not only disingenuous, but will harm our economy. Sustained economic growth is not possible should Congress continue to pile debt on top of debt, or attempt to tax our way out of our fiscal hole.

As the CBO reminded Congress, "If spending grew as projected and taxes were raised in tandem, tax rates would have to reach levels never seen in the U.S. High tax rates would slow the growth of the economy, making the spending burden harder to bear."

Especially troubling is the fact that Congress' long-term cost estimates of government-run health programs have been notoriously inaccurate. When Medicare was created, Congress predicted it would cost $12 billion in 1990. It cost $110 billion in 1990. Medicaid now costs 37 times what it did when it was launched in 1965; Medicare 16 times, both adjusted for inflation.

If the current reform bill outperforms Medicare and Medicaid and grows by a factor of 10, it will cost $1.8 trillion every year. If it follows the path of Medicaid, it will cost $6.7 trillion every year.

What is at stake in this process is not merely a lower standard of living for future generations, but a decline of freedom at home and abroad. We are risking our own national economic stability and security if we continue — through excessive borrowing — to hand potential adversaries leverage over our foreign and domestic policy.

We believe health care needs to be reformed, which is why earlier this year we introduced detailed legislation, the Patients' Choice Act. We drafted our plan cognizant of the fact that we already spend more than 2 1/2 times per person on health care than any other country in the world.

If our health care sector were a stand-alone economy, at $2 trillion it would be the eighth largest in the world, ahead of countries like India and Russia. We don't need to spend more, nor do we need to raise taxes. Instead, we need to direct resources to actual health care rather than the bureaucratic management of health care.

The current reform product does not meet the test of either real reform or fiscal responsibility. Nor does it represent the best of both parties. It represents the frustrated ideological ambitions of one party that believes the way to pull the welfare state back from bankruptcy is by expanding it.

We can fix what's broken in health care without breaking what's working, and without creating a huge new entitlement program that will accelerate the bankruptcy of this country. The American people deserve better.

• Coburn, a practicing physician, is the junior senator from Oklahoma.

IN DEFENSE OF CALLING OBAMA BY THE ADJECTIVES HE DESERVES: ON THE DELICATE BUT IMPORTANT TASK OF DESCRIBING OUR PRESIDENT By Herb Denenberg

Source: http://www.thedenenbergreport.org/article.php?index=1551

November 01, 2009

THE PHONY, FAKER, FRAUD, FOUR-FLUSHING FIBBER WHO HATES AMERICA AND MARCHES US STRAIGHT TOWARD SOCIALISM, FASCISM, AND DESTRUCTION. OR DO WE LET CIVILILITY, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, AND FAUX POLITNESS TRUMP THE TRUTH?

My recent column titled “Obama Taking Us on a Path to Fascism” (October 28, 2009) started an explosion, with both praise and criticism bursting forth. So I thought I’d write a column explaining and justifying some of the uncomplimentary adjectives I’ve aimed at President Barack Hussein Obama, ‘Mm, ‘Mm, ‘Mm. Many people aren’t used to having their political Messiah described with the parade of pejoratives I’ve been launching since the earliest days of the 2008 presidential election.

What happens when legitimate criticism, when telling like it is, when calling a spade a spade and a phony a phony, when the plain unvarnished truth goes out of style because of demands for civility, because of the pressure of political correctness, because of fear of being accused of name-calling, and because of an assumed need for faux politeness when describing our president? And I might add when legitimate criticism and truth telling are jarring because the critic wants to describe the president of the United States in most uncomplimentary but truthful terms. I happen to be in the cross fire on this issue because as soon as Barack Hussein Obama emerged as a serious candidate, I labeled him as a world-class liar, phony, fraud, fibber, faker and four-flusher who also can’t be trusted because of his long association with America-haters, bigots, racists, and even terrorists. That crew of Obama’s close associates includes Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, Bill “Terrorist” Ayres, Father Michael “Racist” Pfleger, Bernadine “Terrorist” Dohrn, and all the rest.


I responded to my critics that I was not name-calling, as I had carefully documented those well-chosen adjectives describing Obama in over 100 columns written for the Philadelphia Bulletin. I believe in civility in public discourse, but civility should not trump truth telling, and political correctness can be potentially fatal and dangerous, as it is when the Obama administration refuses to use the words “war against terror” and “jihadism” and wants to substitute such words as “overseas contingency operation.” That kind of denial is not just semantic shading; it is insanity pure and simple. It is denial and dangerous delusion wrapped in deception. Can you defeat an enemy you are unwilling to correctly describe and instead insist on sanitizing and euphemizing those posing an existential threat?


Take a few of the adjectives used above and consider their applicability to President Barack Hussein ‘Mm ‘Mm ‘Mm Obama. I know this is a hard dose of truth and reality, especially when the mainstream media and much of the public view this man as a Messiah, the Anointed One, and the Chosen One.


LIAR. This is perhaps the easiest case to make, starting with his denial of knowing what Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright was up to. After sitting in the pews of his church for twenty years, after closely working with him, after selecting his church to facilitate his own (i.e., Obama’s) political advancement, after using the title of one of his sermons for the title of his book, Obama claims to have heard nothing, to have read nothing, and to know nothing about Rev. Wright’s bigoted views. After being an active community organizer and politician in Wright’s community and being exposed to all kinds of stories and discussions of Wright and his philosophy, he still knows nothing. This means Obama is either the biggest liar in the world or the biggest idiot. I give him the benefit of the doubt by charitably accepting the former rather than the latter explanation. For further proof of Obama’s status as an habitual world-class liar consider a few of the things he’s said about Obamacare: If you like your doctor or your health insurance plan, you can keep it. The bill does not cover illegal immigrants or abortion. The bill will not add one dime to the deficit. Remember his campaign promises to keep lobbyists out of his administration and to accept public financing of his election. And what about his constant theme of bipartisanship and transparency? He is as bipartisan as Genghis Khan and as transparent as a 12-inch wall of lead.


PHONY AND HYPOCRITE. Obama clearly does the opposite of what he says. He was the great non-partisan, bipartisan hope, a man who saw not Blue States and Red States but the United States. In practice, over his career and certainly in the White House he is the most partisan of politicians. He says he wants to listen to all points of view, but comes over as one who rejects all criticism as the “old politics” and as “game playing.” He is a thin-skinned crybaby who apparently has never learned to take criticism and listen to opposing points of view. He promises a most transparent administration and then delivers the opposite. He stands by without objection as the Democratic Congress ignores and locks out the Republicans. The latest outrage is that they can’t even look at the Senate bill that just came out of committee.


SOCIALIST. This description came into vogue after his “spread the wealth” remark to Joe “The Plumber.” But his whole history shows not only Marxist and Communist associations, but also his frequent statements of that philosophy. He criticized the U.S. Constitution for not providing for “economic freedom” and redistribution of wealth. And now his answer to every problem is to redistribute wealth and soak the rich. Under his sweet rhetoric there is a full-scale class war going on, in which capitalism, profit, and free markets are demonized. In March, the Pew Research Center found 70 percent of Americans believe in the free market system, but a socialist, anti-free-market system is being rammed down their throats.


FASCIST. I’d add one final description, perhaps the harshest but nonetheless on target. Elements of fascism include the suppression of opposition and the suppression of private enterprise. Both are obvious Obama’s objectives. The latter is most obvious, as he expands the reach of government, takes over auto companies and banks, and expands government and our national debt in an unsustainable and reckless manner, thus crowding out private enterprise. He wants to take over the health care industry, one-sixth of the economy, and the energy sector, with Cap and Trade (and Tax) legislation. Then there is the attempt to regulate the pay of executives in financial institutions, not just the ones taking federal bailout money. As Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal put it, this is an unprecedented government regulatory grab, subjecting private enterprise to a Pay Czar “Mussolini.” Every move is to expand government programs and government itself. There’s an entitlement or a bag of them for one Democratic interest group after another. And now look what he is doing with critics. Humana and other insurers were subjected to a “gag order” when they criticized Obamacare. The Fox Cable News Network has been the subject of a White House attack that attempts to destroy, delegitimize, and demonize a major television network. He is after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as an evil demon, that spends a half a billion dollars on lobbying, to defeat essential reforms. He moves to punish critics in the insurance industry by trying to repeal their anti-trust exemption. He moves or his Congressional supporters move on all kinds of anti-democratic measures to silence critics and aid supporters –such as the Fairness Doctrine, diversity and localism to kill conservative talk radio, the Net Neutrality Rules to launch a government takeover of the Internet, and the Employee Free Choice Act to strengthen his friends, the labor bosses, and to destroy the secret ballot in union elections and put decision making on union contracts in the hands of government bureaucrats. Then there is Obama’s close association over many years with ACORN, the corrupt community organization that has often used intimidation to force businesses to take action on the ACORN agenda. But what did you expect when Obama surrounds himself and brings into the White House Marxists, communists, extremists, radicals, those who view Chavez’s revolution as “democratic,” and look to Mao for advice and wisdom, those who disparage America and seem to carry a portfolio of anti-American values and programs?


Don’t kid yourself. America, as we know it, America, as conceived by the Founding Fathers, is under attack by Obama, the Democratic Congress, and the Obama Administration. He has to be stopped if America is to be saved. The great columnist Thomas Sowell is right when he said that it’s time to stop weighing the evidence, and start stopping Obama as his anti-American programs and values are crystal clear to anyone paying attention. This will require an organized uprising of citizens to stop his programs, especially the most dangerous and damaging ones such as Obamacare and Cap and Trade. The time for action is right now, and any delay may be fatal to the survival of the greatest nation in the history of the world. We better hear “freedom’s call” and answer it now in its defense in every legal and appropriate way. Or we may be well on the way to becoming a broken down banana republic, a European socialist-style state or worse. There is a war going on against America values, and we better fight back in full force or we will lose that war and will lose America.


(Herb Denenberg is a veteran Philadelphia journalist, writing columns and doing television for over 30 years. He has served as Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and the Loman Professor of Insurance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has also served as a consultant to over a dozen government agencies, and has won over 100 journalistic awards, including 42 local Emmys and awards from the National Press Club and the American Board of Trial Advocates. He has often testified before Congress on such matters as consumer protection, health care and insurance regulation, and co-authored “The Social Protection Plan of Puerto Rico,” the first no-fault law passed in a U.S. jurisdiction and was Associate Director of the Wisconsin Laws Revision Commission that was responsible for the most comprehensive revision of insurance laws in American history. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He blogs for “Freedom’s Call,” an activist organization that was recently launched. He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins (B.S.), Creighton University’s Law School (J.D.), Harvard Law School (LL.M.) and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.) He has also received honorary degrees from Allentown College (now DeSales University) and Spring Garden College. He can be reached at hdenenberg@aol.com.)




Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, professor at the Wharton School, and Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and is a board member of the Center for Safe Medication Use. He is an adjunct professor of insurance and information science and technology at Cabrini College. You can write Herb at POB 7301,St. Davids, PA e-mail him at hdenenberg@aol.com or reach him at his two Web sites: thedenenbergreport.org or denenbergsdump.org

A 1,990-Page Medical Monstrosity

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=510810

10/29/2009

Medical Care: Speaker Nancy Pelosi's cry in unveiling the House's massive reform bill might as well have been "Viva la health care revolution!" America never voted for change like this.

Just as most congressional Democrats refused to listen to the angry public at town halls in the summer, Speaker Pelosi was not interested in ordinary Americans attending the outdoor rally on the West Front of the Capitol, where she and her fellow House Democrats rolled out their 1,990-page monster health reform bill on Thursday.

YouTube recorded someone not on the RSVP list being refused entry and asking a staffer why the announcement of legislation that will radically affect the lives of all Americans isn't open to the public. "Because that's how we're handling this event," she told him.

Truth be told, most lawmakers are excluded too. As the Hudson Institute's Hanns Kuttner noted on the National Review Web site, you would have to devour 221 pages a day to have read this life-changing legislation in its entirety before it comes to a vote, promised for before Veterans Day, Nov. 11.

Weeks after its unveiling, new tricks are still being discovered within the Senate health bill. Kaiser Health News' Julie Appleby reported Thursday that, despite claims the bill will limit what those in the lower and middle income groups will pay for health insurance, "The fine print shows that, over time, the premium costs could rise well beyond those caps."

The reason for this, Appleby explains, is "the cost of coverage would shift from a percentage of income to a percentage of the premium, no matter how high the premiums go." This will be a big, unpleasant surprise for the working middle class.

Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson on Wednesday revealed that the Senate bill's excise tax on "Cadillac" plans "targets a lot of Chevy plans as well." The tax follows a formula based on the consumer price index plus 1%. But if medical costs and insurance premiums rise significantly higher than the CPI — a near sure thing — a lot more plans get taxed.

Reminiscent of the Alternative Minimum Tax, a measure to soak the rich will end up drowning Joe Sixpack. Meyerson warns: "If employers opt for cheaper policies to avoid the excise taxes on more-expensive plans, their savings may not be passed on to workers as higher wages but simply kept by the employers. Out-of-pocket health costs for workers would rise, but into-pocket wage increases to cover those costs might not be forthcoming."

What similar horrors await detection within Nancy Pelosi's 1,990-page behemoth? Time will tell, but it may take a lot more time than the 13 days House Democrats are giving America to digest this revolutionary proposal.

We already know it contains an aggressive version of the government-run public option, and the 39 Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies warned after the Thursday unveiling of "devastating consequences."

"Millions of people would lose their current private coverage they are happy with," the companies warned. "In addition, the government will underpay providers — even if negotiated rates are initially used — creating major access issues, including long waits for services, with some providers closing their doors."

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association also pointed out how any "government-run plan will use its built-in advantages — no matter how it is initially structured — to take over the market" through "price-setting based on Medicare" or by using "existing government programs as leverage for negotiations."

A government option would also enjoy "many financial advantages right from the start, including an exemption from federal and state taxes and other assessments that private plans must pay, immunity from state lawsuits, as well as a host of other state rules and regulations." Plus it will get "at least $2 billion in startup capital."

The insurers also warn that the young would see their premiums rise 69% on average, according to research by the Oliver Wyman actuarial firm. Americans for Tax Reform detailed 13 new taxes the House health bill would create, from a 5.4% surtax on individuals and small businesses to a 2.5% excise tax on medical devices.

Both the House and the Senate are set to wreck the greatest health care system in the world — unless those now taking it for granted raise a ruckus, and fast.

Special Address - General Stanley McChrystal

Source: http://www.iiss.org/recent-key-addresses/general-stanley-mcchrystal-address/



On Thursday 1 October 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan gave a Special Address on Afghanistan to the IISS

Watch the Address and the Q&A Session

I.                  Preamble

It is an honour for me to be here and I would like to thank you for giving me the time.  I would also like to thank not only my hosts but also all of you who took time to be here today.  This is an extraordinarily important subject: we have young people – not only from the coalition but also young Afghans – in the field today, who depend on the decisions we make and the analysis we do.  Taking the time to talk and think about it is always time well-spent, so I thank you for that.

I am privileged to speak here today as the Commander of NATO’s ISAF forces, representing people from 42 troop-contributing nations.  I represent them today and I hope to do that well.  As you know, I have a British deputy, Lieutenant General Jim Dutton, who is coming to the end of his term and will soon be replaced by another great British officer, Lieutenant General Nick Parker.

Before I continue, I would like to recognise the enormous sacrifice that families here in the UK have made.  As you know, the losses that we have suffered are significant in terms of those who have fallen, suffered life-changing injuries, or given up parts of their life just by being away from family.  I am in awe of the performance of the British brothers whom I have been honoured to work with for a number of years now.

I am humbled to be here because I do not claim to be in the same category as people who have been talking here, such as Prime Minister Brown and President Zardari, who expressed their views on this complex subject.  I do, however, believe that I can offer some perspectives and will try to do that today.  I will start by posing seven questions before attempting to answer them.  If this works according to my plan, it will totally exhaust your appetite for this issue and I will leave the room to wild cheers and lucrative job offers.  If my plan fails, as most of mine do, I will be happy to field any questions that we have time for.

II.              What is the Right Approach to Use in Afghanistan?

1.                  People’s Own Suggestions

People ask me this question all the time; many people offer their own suggestions.  There is a multitude of approaches to what to do.  Some people say that we should focus primarily on development; others say that we should conduct a counterterrorist-focused battle, given that this really started after 9/11 and Al-Qaeda’s strikes.  Other people say that we should conduct counterinsurgency (COIN).  A paper has been written that recommends that we use a plan called ‘Chaosistan’, and that we let Afghanistan become a Somalia-like haven of chaos that we simply manage from outside.

2.                  The Complexities of Afghanistan

a.                  The delicate balance of power

I arrived in Afghanistan in May 2002 and I have spent a part of every year since then involved in the effort.  I have learned a tremendous amount about it and, every day, I realise how little about Afghanistan I actually understand.  I discount immediately anyone who simplifies the problem or offers a solution, because they have absolutely no idea of the complexity of what we are dealing with.

In Afghanistan, things are rarely as they seem, and the outcomes of actions we take, however well‑intended, are often different from what we expect.  If you pull the lever, the outcome is not what you have been programmed to think.  For example, digging a well sounds quite simple.  How could you do anything wrong by digging a well to give people clean water?  Where you build that well, who controls that water, and what water it taps into all have tremendous implications and create great passion.

If you build a well in the wrong place in a village, you may have shifted the basis of power in that village.  If you tap into underground water, you give power to the owner of that well that they did not have before, because the traditional irrigation system was community-owned.  If you dig a well and contract it to one person or group over another, you make a decision that, perhaps in your ignorance, tips the balance of power, or perception thereof, in that village.

Therefore, with a completely altruistic aim of building a well, you can create divisiveness or give the impression that you, from the outside, do not understand what is going on or that you have sided with one element or another, yet all you tried to do is provide water.

b.                  COIN mathematics

There is another complexity that people do not understand and which the military have to learn: I call it ‘COIN mathematics’.  Intelligence will normally tell us how many insurgents are operating in an area.  Let us say that there are 10 in a certain area.  Following a military operation, two are killed.  How many insurgents are left?  Traditional mathematics would say that eight would be left, but there may only be two, because six of the living eight may have said, ‘This business of insurgency is becoming dangerous so I am going to do something else.’

There are more likely to be as many as 20, because each one you killed has a brother, father, son and friends, who do not necessarily think that they were killed because they were doing something wrong.  It does not matter – you killed them.  Suddenly, then, there may be 20, making the calculus of military operations very different.  Yet we are asking young corporals, sergeants and lieutenants to make those kinds of calculations and requiring them to understand the situation.  They have to – there is no simple workaround.

It is that complex: where you build the well, what military operations to run, who you talk to.  Everything that you do is part of a complex system with expected and unexpected, desired and undesired outcomes, and outcomes that you never find out about.  In my experience, I have found that the best answers and approaches may be counterintuitive; i.e. the opposite of what it seems like you ought to do is what ought to be done.  When I am asked what approach we should take in Afghanistan, I say ‘humility’.

III.           What Environment Are We Operating In?

1.                  Generally Accepted Truths

The answer to this question starts with some generally accepted truths about Afghanistan, which we all know to be true:

• It is a graveyard of empires.

  
  



• Afghanistan has never been ruled by a strong central government.

  
  



• Afghans do not consider themselves Afghans. 

  
  

All three are untrue.  If you ask an Afghan what he is, he will say, ‘I am an Afghan’.  There have been strong central governments, although different from what you think of as central government.  In the sense of governance, there have been periods when Afghanistan absolutely had a central government.  Therefore, we have to start by not accepting any of the generally accepted ‘bumper sticker’ truths.

2.                  Real Truths

a.                  Complex, difficult geography and demography

In terms of real truths, it is complex, difficult terrain, both in terms of land and people.  It is also a tribal society with a culture that is vastly different from what most of us are familiar with.  There are variations around the country; you cannot assume that what is true in one province is true in another.  That goes for ethnic, geographic and economic issues.  You cannot even assume that what is true in one valley is true in the next any more than you can assume that one neighbourhood in London is exactly the same as another.  We would not generalise here, yet sometimes, as outsiders, we want to do that.

b.                  A long period of conflict

I would also remind people that we have been waging a war for eight years, yet the Afghans have been at it for 30.  Life expectancy in Afghanistan is 44 years, so not many people remember pre‑conflict life in Afghanistan.  Of those 30 years, about 10 were spent fighting the Soviets, followed by six years of ‘warlordism’ and a further six years of Taliban rule and civil rule, and the last eight years have been eight more years of fighting.

One elder said something that really struck me one night as we were talking: ‘What you see in Afghanistan now is a reflection of pieces of each of those eras’.  It is now a mosaic of the experiences of all those eras.  If you think about the impact of 30 years on people and on a society, calculations change.  The certainty that you have when you walk through your neighbourhood in London is not the certainty that they have.  The expectation of the future is not the expectation that they may have.  The opportunities to be educated and to associate with different ethnic groups, which have become more of a challenge in recent years, are very different.

c.                  A damaged society

The society is what I would call ‘damaged’.  Individuals may not be damaged, but the society is not as it was.  It is not so uniformly; nor can you say ‘it is all different here’.  Tribal structures, relationships and expectations are uncertain now.  When you go into a village in a Pashtun area, traditionally you could have predicted what the role and interrelationships of the mullah or the elders would be.  That is no longer true.  It varies based upon the experience of that area.  In some areas, some have disproportionate influence and others have none.  Some have been killed.  In other cases, elements like the Taliban have come in and completely turned upside down the traditional structures.  You can also not assume that traditional structures have disappeared, so you have to go in and learn what the structure is and how people deal with it.

3.                  A Uniquely Complex Environment

What we face, then, is a uniquely complex environment, where there are at least three regional and resilient insurgencies, with further sub-insurgencies.  They have intersected on top of a dynamic blend of local power struggles in a country damaged by 30 years of war.  You then run into someone who raises their finger and says ‘here is the solution’ – they can have my job.

4.                  A Crisis of Confidence

We also face a crisis of confidence.  Afghans are frustrated after the most recent eight years of war, because in 2001 their expectations skyrocketed.  Along with the arrival of coalition forces, they expected a positive change.  They saw that initially and then waited for other changes – economic development and improvements in governance – that, in many cases, may have been unrealistic but, in many cases, were unmet.  Therefore, there was a mismatch between what they had hoped for and what they have experienced.  Again, as we learn in all societies, expectations and perceptions often matter as much as the reality.

IV.           What Is the Situation Now?

1.                  Serious and Deteriorating

The situation is serious, and I choose that word very carefully.  I would add that neither success nor failure for our endeavour in support of the Afghan people and government can be taken for granted.  My assessment and my best military judgment is that the situation is, in some ways, deteriorating, but not in all ways.

2.                  Tremendous Progress

I can also point out areas in which tremendous progress is evident: the construction of roads, provision of clean water, access to healthcare, the presence of children in school, and access to education for females.  All of these are up dramatically and hugely positive, and portend well for the future.

3.                  A Need to Reverse Current Trends

However, a tremendous number of villagers live in fear, and there are officials who either cannot or do not serve their people effectively.  Violence is on the increase, not only because there are more coalition forces, but also because the insurgency has grown.  We need to reverse the current trends, and time does matter.  Waiting does not prolong a favourable outcome.  This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support.  However, the cruel irony is that, in order to succeed, we need patience, discipline, resolve and time.

V.              Who is Winning?

1.                  A Battle of Minds and Perceptions

a.                  Not a game with points on a scoreboard

The answer to this question depends on who you ask.  This is not like a football game with points on a scoreboard; it is more like a political debate, after which both sides announce that they won.  That matters because we are not the scorekeepers: not NATO ISAF, not our governments, and not even our press.  The perception of all of these entities will matter and they will affect the situation, but ultimately this is going to be decided in the minds and perceptions of the Afghan people of the Afghan government and of the insurgents, whether they can win or are winning, and, most importantly, the perception of the villager who casts his lot with the winner.

b.                  Villagers make rational and practical decisions

Villagers are supremely rational and practical people: they make the decision on who they will support, based upon who can protect them and provide for them what they need.  If a villager lives in a remote area where the government or security forces cannot protect them from coercion or harm from insurgents, he will not support the government – it would be illogical.  Similarly, if the government cannot provide him with rule of law, the basic ability to adjudicate requirements legally, or just enough services to allow him to pursue a likelihood, it is difficult for him to make a rational decision to support the government.  The Taliban is not popular.  It does not have a compelling context.  What it has is proximity to the people and the ability to provide coercion and, in some cases, things like basic rule of law, based upon the fact that they are there and can put themselves in that position.  The perception of the villager matters in terms of which side he should support, so winning the battle of perception is key.

c.                  Allowing the facts to speak for themselves

I also think that winning the battle of perception, as it applies everywhere but particularly to us, is about credibility.  As I told you, the situation is absolutely not deteriorating by every indicator, but I will not stand up and say that we are winning until I am told by indicators that we are winning.  For me to stand up and claim good things that are not supported by data in order to motivate us and make us feel good very rapidly undermines our credibility.  Our own forces are smart enough to do that, so I intend to tell people the best assessment that we can, as accurately as possible, and allow the facts to speak for themselves.

VI.           It Has Been Eight Years – Why Is It Not Better?

This is a fair question for the Afghan people and for societies that have supported this effort.  It is true that, after eight years of tremendous effort and expenditure and the loss of good people, many things are worse.  Why have eight years of effort not made things better?  There are a number of complex reasons:

• The insurgency grew.

  
  



• Expectations – both expected and unexpected – were not met, which has created frustration.

  
  



• It took us longer than I wish it had to recognise this as a serious insurgency.  As the Taliban started to regain its effectiveness, we lagged in terms of accepting that as a clear reality.

  
  

Through our actions, we – i.e. the coalition and its Afghan partners – sometimes exacerbate the problems.

• We have under-resourced our operations.

  
  



• In some areas, we have underperformed; in others, we have under-coordinated.

  
  



• We have struggled with unity of effort, national agreements and chains of command that are complex to say the least.

  
  



• In some ways, we have not overcome some of our intrinsic disadvantages.  We are operating in a very different culture, with language differences, relationships that do not exist and a complex situation that takes time to understand, yet we have not effectively developed enough expertise, continuity of people or sufficient numbers of language-trained people to deal with the situation as effectively as we could have.

  
  



• Most importantly, our own operational culture – and by ‘our’ I mean coalition forces – and manner of operating distances us physically and psychologically from the people who we seek to protect.  We need to connect with people, yet physical or linguistic barriers make it increasingly difficult.  Ultimately, our security comes from the people.  We cannot build enough walls to protect ourselves if the people do not.

  
  

We must, then, operate and think in a fundamentally new way.

VII.       Can We Succeed?

1.                  Protecting the Afghan People from the Enemy

We can succeed.  We must redefine the fight.  The objective is the will of the Afghan people.  We must protect the Afghan people from all threats: from the enemy and from our own actions.  Let me describe it: a few days ago, just before we left to travel here, a bus south of Kandahar struck an improvised explosive device (IED) killing 30 Afghan civilians.  That is tragic.

On the one hand, you might say that the Afghan people would recoil against the Taliban who left that IED.  To a degree, they do, but we must also understand that they recoil against us because they might think that, if we were not there, neither would be the IED.  Therefore, we indirectly caused the IED to be there.  Second, we said that we would protect them, but we did not.  Sometimes, then, the most horrific events caused by the insurgents continue to reinforce in the minds of the Afghan people a mindset that coalition forces are either ineffective, or at least that their presence in Afghanistan is not in their interest.  That does not happen all of the time.  There are times when they feel differently, but you have to put things in that context to understand what we must do.

2.                  Protection from Our Own Actions

a.                  Respecting the people

We also need to protect them from our own actions.  When we fight, if we become focused on destroying the enemy but end up killing Afghan civilians, destroying Afghan property or acting in a way that is perceived as arrogant, we convince the Afghan people that we do not care about them.  If we say, ‘We are here for you – we respect and want to protect you’, while destroying their home, killing their relatives or destroying their crops, it is difficult for them to connect those two concepts.  It would be difficult for us to do the same.  The understanding, then, must be that we respect the people.

b.                  Changing our mindset

We must assign responsibility because, ultimately, the Afghans must defeat the insurgency.  As a force, however, we must change our mindset.  Whether or not we like it, we have a conventional warfare culture – not just our militaries but our societies.  Our societies want to see lines on a map moving forward towards objectives, but you will not see that in a counterinsurgency because you do not see as clearly what is happening in people’s minds.  We will have to do things dramatically and even uncomfortably differently in order to change how we think and operate.

In short, we cannot succeed by simply trying harder.  We cannot drop three more bombs and have a greater effect; it is much more subtle than that.

3.                  Crucial Next Steps

In my mind, therefore, what we must do over the next period of time is:

• Gain the initiative by reversing the perceived momentum possessed by the insurgents.

  
  



• Seek rapid growth of Afghan national security forces – the army and the police.

  
  



• Improve their effectiveness and ours through closer partnering, which involves planning, living and operating together and taking advantage of each other’s strengths as we go forward.  Within ISAF, we will put more emphasis on every part of that, by integrating our headquarters, physically co-locating our units, and sharing ownership of the problem.

  
  



• Address shortfalls in the capacity of governance and the ability of the Afghan government to provide rule of law.

  
  



• Tackle the issue of predatory corruption by some officials or by warlords who are not in an official position but who seem to have the ability, sometimes sanctioned by existing conditions, to do that.

  
  



• Focus our resources and prioritise in those areas where the population is most threatened.  We do not have enough forces to do everything everywhere at once, so this has to be prioritised and phased over time.

  
  

4.                  A Need for Resolve

As you know, the concepts that I have outlined here are not new, but if we implement them aggressively and effectively, we can create a revolution in terms of our effectiveness.  We must show resolve.  Uncertainty disheartens our allies, emboldens our foe.  A villager recently asked me whether we intended to remain in his village and provide security, to which I confidently promised him that, of course, we would.  He looked at me and said, ‘Okay, but you did not stay last time.’

VIII.    Why Bother?

1.                  The Risk Posed by Al-Qaeda

Afghanistan is difficult, so why bother?  It is a long way away.  It is not our business.  As we know, however, 9/11 brought us here to the latest interaction, and transnational terrorist threats absolutely remain.  I believe that the loss of stability in Afghanistan brings a huge risk that transnational terrorists such as Al-Qaeda will operate from within Afghanistan again.

2.                  High Stakes for Afghanistan and the Region

I also believe that the stakes are high for Afghanistan and for the region.  An unstable Afghanistan not only negatively affects what happens within its borders but also affects its neighbours.  Afghanistan is, in many ways, one of the keys to stability in south Asia.  A state that can provide its own security is important to all international security, and certainly to that of the UK, the US and our international partnership.  The Afghan people are worth bothering about and they deserve that.

IX.           Conclusion

In conclusion, I am exceptionally proud to serve at ISAF.  Within my office, I have a picture of a British battle group, led by Lieutenant Colonel Gus Fair, with whom I worked for a long time in Iraq.  He is with his soldiers, who I had the opportunity to speak with when I visited them during operations in Spin Majid this summer in the Helmand River valley.  I keep that picture because, when I looked into their eyes, which were bloodshot with fatigue, I remember the extraordinary professionalism, competence and sheer courage of those young men.  Whenever I come to London, I like to run through the city, and I particularly like the statues that you have erected to heroes.  I hope that you erect one to that generation – they have earned it.  Thank you.

The McCrystal Report By Edward W. Ross

Source: http://ewross.blogtownhall.com/2009/10/05/the_mccrystal_report.thtml

October 05, 2009

Reading Gen Stanley McCrystal's unclassified 66-page report to Sec. of Defense Gates, I could not help but think back to my two tours of duty in Vietnam. I kept substituting South Vietnam for Afghanistan and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) for the Afghan National Army. The Vietnam and Afghanistan wars are two vastly different conflicts, of course; and the US armed forces that are fighting in Afghanistan are much different from their Vietnam War predecessors. Nevertheless, the two wars have something important in common. The right counterinsurgency strategy was the key to victory then, and it's the key to victory now.

When General Creighton Abrams assumed command from General William Westmorland in June 1968 he abandoned Westmorland's search-and-destroy strategy and began pursuing a clear-and-hold counterinsurgency strategy, and he expanded training and equipping the ARVN. His strategy was extremely successful and led to major South Vietnam victories over the North Vietnamese Army. Unfortunately, the 1968 Tet Offensive had truned American public opinion against the war, and it was too little too late. General McCrystal's and CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus' recommendations reflect their understanding of the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq wars.

We've been at war in Afghanistan for eight years already, and, as during Vietnam, the American people are war weary. It's not too late in Afghanistan, however, to do the right thing. President Obama should accept McCrystal's recommendation and avoid what happened in Vietnam.

Read my weekly columns and my current sidebar at http://ewross.com

Read Previous EWRoss at http://ewross.com/Sidebar.htm

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Why eligibility story is still alive: Public awareness triggered by Farah's billboard campaign

Source: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=105168

July 27, 2009

WASHINGTON – How did a supposedly "bogus" story questioning Barack Obama's eligibility for the presidency get to the top of the news budgets of every major media outlet in the country?

It didn't happen by accident.

Three months ago, Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WorldNetDaily, the largest independent news source on the Internet, hatched a plan to do just that – create public awareness and media curiosity.

Frustrated by the lack of coverage of what he considered to be an issue of extraordinary importance, Farah launched a national billboard campaign asking the question: "Where's the birth certificate?"

The campaign raised nearly $100,000 in its first week and resulted in billboards springing up around the country. Even more important to the plan was the controversy it engendered.

Three major outdoor advertising companies rejected the ad for reasons of suitability.

"The plan was to create some buzz – to get people talking about a grave constitutional issue," he explained. "Before that campaign began, this really was a dead story, other than in WND. Now, every major media outlet is covering it – if only in covering the tracks of their previous ineptitude and negligence."

The facts are simple, says Farah. No controlling legal authority in America ever checked to see if Obama was a "natural born citizen" as the Constitution requires. They took at face value Obama's story as told in his autobiography and accepted a document he released that could never prove his eligibility.

Farah says the release of Obama's long-form birth certificate is vitally necessary even to begin proper vetting as to his constitutional qualifications.

While the media is now on to the story, Farah says, they seem to be more interested in killing it than exploring. CNN President Jon Klein even went so far as to issue a memo to his news staff declaring it dead because the state of Hawaii had supposedly destroyed original long-forth birth certificates in 2001.

"Where is the curiosity among my media colleagues?" Farah asked. "If this were Watergate, would they be calling the story dead because of the 18-and-a-half-minute gap in the recording? This is incredible!"

As WND has reported, Obama has also failed to release his school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passport, his medical records and his files from his years as an Illinois state legislator.

WND has produced hundreds of stories reporting on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen" and other issues. The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Some of the challenges question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Additionally, questions have been raised about Obama's move to Indonesia as a child and the passort he used to travel to Pakistan as a young man.

Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate and other documentation, such as educational records, that would put to rest the questions.

The billboards, also, have remained a key to raising the question.



The billboard campaign follows an ongoing petition campaign launched several months ago by WND Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah.

Send a contribution to support the national billboard campaign that asks a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?"

If you are a member of the media who would like to interview Farah about this story, e-mail press@wnd.com.

Time To Stop Amuck Acorn's Bank Enablers By Rep. Michele Bachmann

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=510298

10/26/2009

The Community Reinvestment Act has increasingly been at the core of controversy, most recently for its role in the financial meltdown that began in 2008.

Many economists have long questioned whether the CRA's mandates, which encouraged subpar lending standards, harmed the housing market.

Now we have news of a new controversy that brings the CRA together with the infamous Acorn, which has been a prime beneficiary of the act's mandates.

Acorn has earned a reputation with the public for persistently unethical behavior and repeated disregard for voter registration and other federal and state laws.

Recent videos showing Acorn employees giving advice on how to set up a prostitution ring as a legal enterprise by violating tax and immigration laws and abusing government housing grants have demonstrated Acorn's flagrant abuse of the public trust and complete disrespect for the law.

Abundant evidence shows that this is more than a case of a few bad apples; the organizational structure promotes and nurtures this behavior.

Since 1994, Acorn has received $53 million in direct federal funds. In addition, state tax dollars regularly flow to Acorn.

Now we know that banks have been funneling money to Acorn in order to comply with the federal mandates of the CRA.

Originally unveiled in 1977, the CRA was meant to ensure that low-income individuals and minorities were receiving fair and equal access to credit. But over the years it was distorted, shifting its focus from process to outcomes. This shift forced banks to loosen lending standards and make mortgages that wouldn't have otherwise passed muster.

For banks that wanted to protect themselves from regulators, they saw an alternative: donate or partner with groups, such as Acorn, that gave financial advice to the communities singled out by the CRA.

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council Web site, which links to CRA ratings and evaluations conducted by banking examiners, shows that many banks have donated to or partnered with Acorn to comply with CRA mandates.

Acorn's name is employed like a code word used to convey to federal regulators with a wink and a nod that these banks are serious about meeting CRA mandates. Indeed, Acorn Housing's Web site proclaims that it "provides one-on-one mortgage loan counseling, first-time homebuyer classes, and helps clients obtain affordable mortgages through unique lending partnerships."

For example, Citizens Bank of Massachusetts "offers an affordable mortgage program through Acorn for low- and moderate-income homebuyers with below market rates, expanded ratios and a low down-payment requirement."

Northeast Bank in Minnesota "donated $2,000 to Acorn." Independence Community Bank "provided grants to the New York City Office of the Acorn Housing Corp." And New York Community Bank "participated as a co-sponsor of the Bank Fair hosted by New Jersey Acorn."

The smaller banks aren't alone in boasting of their Acorn ties to meet federal regulators' standards. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and other big names have given millions as well.

BofA, which was one of Acorn's biggest corporate sponsors — giving $2 million to Acorn Housing Corp. in Chicago — has ended donations to Acorn in the wake of the most recent scandalous headlines.

Government must re-examine the rules that encourage the relationships that banks have with Acorn. Acorn employees are clearly incapable of offering reliable, let alone legal, financial counseling, as illustrated by the undercover videos in Acorn offices. We can surely find better ways of meeting the CRA's stated goals of fair and equal access to credit.

I have urged the FDIC and FFIEC chairman, Sheila Bair, to conduct a thorough examination of Acorn's role in helping banks satisfy their CRA obligations and to issue clear guidance that prohibits banks from receiving CRA credit for donating to or partnering with Acorn.

If the CRA is about ensuring fair and equal access to credit, banks should be judged on whether they provide such access and not on whether they have paid protection money to a politically favored group.

It is disturbing that in addition to mandating subpar lending standards, the CRA is guilty of promoting borderline extortion by an organization that has demonstrated a pervasive culture of corruption.

For years, Democrats have ignored the consequences the CRA has had on the housing market and our financial infrastructure.

The time to pay attention is now. Congress is considering additional, overreaching financial regulatory legislation.

Americans should look at the CRA's example and be wary of new government mandates on our nation's private companies.

• Bachmann, a Republican, represents Minnesota's 6th Congressional District and is a member of the House Financial Services Committee.

Insuring Doom

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=510340

10/26/2009

Health Care: Washington's latest target is America's "fat cat" health insurance companies. A closer look reveals a vital but vulnerable industry, not the greedy, profiteering image pushed by health reformers.

We've seen "Big Oil" dragged to Capitol Hill to be slandered by power-hungry senators and congressmen for finding, extracting and refining the lifeblood commodity of the global economy. We've seen the pharmaceutical industry drawn and quartered for doing what it takes to discover, make and market lifesaving and life-enhancing drugs.

The latest villain in the politicians' demagogic fantasyland is private health insurance. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accused private insurers of making "immoral profits." And they're a prime target for taxes to pay for the health care revolution Congress and the White House have planned.

But in fact, as we pointed out recently in these pages, this is an industry that actually lags many others in the U.S. economy. Plenty of other sectors of private industry are doing far better.

And some of the things Washington has planned — in particular a "public option" — would leave private insurers bankrupt.

As the Associated Press recently reported, the health insurance industry's profit margins tend to be in the 6% range, not impressive at all when compared with other areas of insurance. Margins shrank to 2.2% last year, with health insurers ranking 35th on the Fortune 500 list of industries. As a result, the credit ratings of some leading insurers have been downgraded to negative.

Health insurers' earnings grew less than 9% in the last five years, and they now rank below communications firms, railroads, beer companies, detergent makers, fast-food restaurants, kitchen utensil manufacturers, and chocolate makers.

Watch out — one of those might be Uncle Sam's next target.

Recently, representatives of the private insurers dared to commission a PricewaterhouseCoopers study with evidence of the huge cost increases Americans can expect if Congress' transformation of the greatest health care system in the world is passed into law.

The anti-business liberals who run Congress have unsheathed the long knives. As Steve Forbes recently pointed out in IBD, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and his colleagues "are openly engaged in a campaign of harassment and intimidation against 52 of America's largest health insurance providers."

Forbes charged that "they seek nothing less than to silence all voices opposed to their government-run health care proposals."

Waxman is nosing into and demanding every detail on executive and employee salaries and expenses for the past five years — information irrelevant to health reform but very useful as a political tool to blackmail the industry into submission under the threat of congressional subpoena. There's a name for this: witch hunt.

When Congress is finished with the U.S. medical system, Americans may in a short time think they live in France or Britain, where waiting lists for vital surgeries and treatments are the norm.

How ironic if they were deluded into believing that the villains are the companies that have, until now, saved them from such mediocrity and incompetence.

Nanny State, Squared

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=510032

10/22/2009

Big Government: Hardly a day passes without the unveiling of some new federal intrusion into our lives. At some point Americans must say "enough's enough," or sit silently as all our precious liberties are taken away.

The Democrats in Congress and the White House are pushing through the most sweeping changes toward direct government control of our economy since at least the Great Depression. Consider just a few news items from recent days:

• The Senate moves to give the Food and Drug Administration huge new power over what we eat and drink, and what medicine we take.

• A House panel OKs a new Consumer Finance Protection Agency that will have direct control over consumer credit from banks and businesses — potentially killing a private system of consumer borrowing that, whatever its flaws, has led to unparalleled consumer wealth and access to credit.

• A new "bailout" is proposed for small businesses that will further distort markets, punish successful companies and reward failure. The opposite, in other words, of a free market economy.

• Execs of companies that took government bailouts get their pay slashed — courtesy of U.S. "paymaster" Kenneth Feinberg.

In ways large and small, it's easy to see we're building a nanny state that will make Europe's seem modest by comparison. After all, this doesn't even include health care "reform" or cap-and-trade. Soon, the federal government will control every aspect of our lives — though the Constitution explicitly forbids it.

This is the inevitable result of the massive expansion of government over the past year. The $700 billion TARP program, the $787 billion stimulus, a planned "second stimulus," $13 trillion in new debt over the next decade — inevitably, we'll see new government controls and regulations on nearly everything.

"They are awakening a vast regulatory apparatus with authority over nearly every U.S. workplace, 15,000 consumer products and most items found in kitchen pantries and medicine cabinets," the Washington Post has observed.

Too bad none of it's working. White House economic adviser Christina Romer acknowledged Thursday the stimulus is running out of steam — despite the $194 billion spent.

Meanwhile, the TARP czar admits that, despite comments last year that the bailout could end up paying for itself, very little of the more than $700 billion will be paid back.

What do we get? A slow-growing economy, fewer jobs, government-controlled incomes and trillions in new debt. Some nanny.

The Middle-Class Health Tax Heist Of 2009 By Sally C. Pipes

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=510094

10/23/2009

Poring over the details of the 1,501-page health care bill that came out of Sen. Max Baucus' Finance Committee, it's clear that the financing is so full of smoke and mirrors that one has to wear a respirator and hard hat to get through it.

But by the time one gets to the end of the bill, estimated to cost $829 billion over 10 years, clarity emerges — the Democrats plan to finance their expanded government care on the backs of America's middle-class taxpayers.

Baucus and company have decided to tax what the press calls "Cadillac" health plans. Prior to hitting the fine print, this indicates that only excessive, gold-plated plans found in the executive suites would be hit.

Baucus' "mark," however, shows that it's more likely the janitor who will be paying the tab.

Included in the bill is a confiscatory excise tax of 40% on "Cadillac" health plans that cost more than $8,000 for an individual or $21,000 for a family. This appears reasonable, as today most plans are well under these limits.

However, it's not actually health plans that are taxed at 40%, but the aggregate benefits that relate to health care that employers offer, regardless of whether they are funded by the employee or employer. The limits apply not only to employer-sponsored medical care but also to vision and dental plans.

The most damage is done by Baucus' attack on Flexible Spending Accounts, lifelines for families with high medical bills that allow them to set aside their own money — not the government's and not the employer's — to fund health-related spending with pretax dollars.

Baucus would cap these at $2,500 — half of what the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan currently offers federal employees — and adds this to what he considers a Cadillac.

This tax-increasing cap applies in 2010, long before any additional health benefits are offered.

And it's not only definitional handiwork that does damage. Baucus sets the prices today, doesn't start indexing them until 2014, and then indexes them at a rate well below historical health insurance inflation rates.

If we start with today's reality and use history as a guide, it is clear Baucus is doing damage to the middle class.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average employer pays $13,375 for a family plan this year, a rate that's increased at 8.7% annually for the last decade. Add to that the average $1,569 a family passes through flexible spending, and $1,000 for dental and vision and, in 2009, the total taxable spending for Baucus is $15,944.

This will likely inflate at the historical rate of health insurance spending, yet Baucus holds his $21,000 bogey constant. It's not until 2014 that he allows his Cadillac to increase in price.

In 2013, when the tax kicks in, the average employer-provided package will already be roughly $21,000, if the last decade serves as a reliable guide.

Every year hence, the employer will be on the hook for the massive tax. By 2023, the average cost of a family plan will be $47,337, and the allowable deduction will only be $30,018. The difference — $17,319 — will be taxed at 40%, costing employers an additional $6,927.

Employers will not pay this tax. Instead, they will cut benefits, shifting costs that must be paid with after-tax dollars to an already burdened middle class.

This is only the damage done to the average American in an average year. Millions of Americans experience years in which they have extraordinary health expenses, perhaps braces for a child that they manage to fund by deferring their own money into Flexible Spending Accounts.

Millions of other families have members with expensive chronic health conditions, such as a child with autism or some other special need. They use flexible spending to purchase therapy and treatments not covered by insurance. Capping Flexible Spending Accounts at $2,500 is a harsh tax that will extract billions of dollars from those who can least afford to pay it.

Baucus' bill is certain to increase taxes on ordinary Americans spending their own money on health care.

Health reform is no longer about getting coverage to those who need it, but getting a bill for a Democratic Congress and president who want it.

• Pipes is president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is "The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen's Guide."

Cheney: “We cannot protect this country by putting politics over security, and turning the guns on our own guys”

Source: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p18209.xml

Center for Security Policy | Oct 22, 2009

On Wednesday night, October 21, former Vice President Dick Cheney received the Center's 20th Keeper of the Flame Award.

 

Here are the Vice President's prepared remarks:

 

Thank you all very much. It’s a pleasure to be here, and especially to receive the Keeper of the Flame Award in the company of so many good friends.

I’m told that among those you’ve recognized before me was my friend Don Rumsfeld. I don’t mind that a bit. It fits something of a pattern. In a career that includes being chief of staff, congressman, and secretary of defense, I haven’t had much that Don didn’t get first. But truth be told, any award once conferred on Donald Rumsfeld carries extra luster, and I am very proud to see my name added to such a distinguished list.

To Frank Gaffney and all the supporters of Center for Security Policy, I thank you for this honor. And I thank you for the great energy and high intelligence you bring to as vital a cause as there is – the advance of freedom and the uncompromising defense of the United States.

Most anyone who is given responsibility in matters of national security quickly comes to appreciate the commitments and structures put in place by others who came before. You deploy a military force that was planned and funded by your predecessors. You inherit relationships with partners and obligations to allies that were first undertaken years and even generations earlier. With the authority you hold for a little while, you have great freedom of action. And whatever course you follow, the essential thing is always to keep commitments, and to leave no doubts about the credibility of your country’s word.

So among my other concerns about the drift of events under the present administration, I consider the abandonment of missile defense in Eastern Europe to be a strategic blunder and a breach of good faith.

It is certainly not a model of diplomacy when the leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic are informed of such a decision at the last minute in midnight phone calls. It took a long time and lot of political courage in those countries to arrange for our interceptor system in Poland and the radar system in the Czech Republic. Our Polish and Czech friends are entitled to wonder how strategic plans and promises years in the making could be dissolved, just like that – with apparently little, if any, consultation. Seventy years to the day after the Soviets invaded Poland, it was an odd way to mark the occasion.

You hardly have to go back to 1939 to understand why these countries desire – and thought they had – a close and trusting relationship with the United States. Only last year, the Russian Army moved into Georgia, under the orders of a man who regards the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. Anybody who has spent much time in that part of the world knows what Vladimir Putin is up to. And those who try placating him, by conceding ground and accommodating his wishes, will get nothing in return but more trouble.

What did the Obama Administration get from Russia for its abandonment of Poland and the Czech Republic, and for its famous “Reset” button? Another deeply flawed election and continued Russian opposition to sanctioning Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

In the short of it, President Obama’s cancellation of America’s agreements with the Polish and Czech governments was a serious blow to the hopes and aspirations of millions of Europeans. For twenty years, these peoples have done nothing but strive to move closer to us, and to gain the opportunities and security that America offered. These are faithful friends and NATO allies, and they deserve better. The impact of making two NATO allies walk the plank won’t be felt only in Europe. Our friends throughout the world are watching and wondering whether America will abandon them as well.

Big events turn on the credibility of the United States – doing what we said we would do, and always defending our fundamental security interests. In that category belong the ongoing missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the need to counter the nuclear ambitions of the current regime in Iran.

Candidate Obama declared last year that he would be willing to sit down with Iran's leader without preconditions. As President, he has committed America to an Iran strategy that seems to treat engagement as an objective rather than a tactic. Time and time again, he has outstretched his hand to the Islamic Republic's authoritarian leaders, and all the while Iran has continued to provide lethal support to extremists and terrorists who are killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Islamic Republic continues to provide support to extremists in Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, the regime continues to spin centrifuges and test missiles. And these are just the activities we know about.

I have long been skeptical of engagement with the current regime in Tehran, but even Iran experts who previously advocated for engagement have changed their tune since the rigged elections this past June and the brutal suppression of Iran's democratic protestors. The administration clearly missed an opportunity to stand with Iran's emocrats, whose popular protests represent the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic since its founding in 1979. Instead, the resident has been largely silent about the violent crackdown on Iran's protestors, and has moved blindly forward to engage Iran's authoritarian regime. Unless the Islamic Republic fears real consequences from the United States and the international community, it is hard to see how diplomacy will work.

Next door in Iraq, it is vitally important that President Obama, in his rush to withdraw troops, not undermine the progress we’ve made in recent years. Prime Minister Maliki met yesterday with President Obama, who began his press availability with an extended comment about Afghanistan. When he finally got around to talking bout Iraq, he told the media that he reiterated to Maliki his intention to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq. Former President Bush's bold decision to change strategy in Iraq and surge U.S. forces there set the stage for success in that country. Iraq has the potential to be a strong, democratic ally in the war on terrorism, and an example of economic and democratic reform in the heart of the Middle East. The Obama Administration has an obligation to protect this young democracy and build on the strategic success we have achieved in Iraq.

We should all be concerned as well with the direction of policy on Afghanistan. For quite a while, the cause of our military in that country went pretty much unquestioned, even on the left. The effort was routinely praised by way of contrast to Iraq, which many wrote off as a failure until the surge proved them wrong. Now suddenly – and despite our success in Iraq – we’re hearing a drumbeat of defeatism over Afghanistan. These criticisms carry the same air of hopelessness, they offer the same short-sighted arguments for walking away, and they should be summarily rejected for the same reasons of national security.

Having announced his Afghanistan strategy last March, President Obama now seems afraid to make a decision, and unable to provide his commander on the ground with the troops he needs to complete his mission.

President Obama has said he understands the stakes for America. When he announced his new strategy he couched the need to succeed in the starkest possible terms, saying, quote, “If the Afghan government falls to the Taliban – or allows al-Qaeda to go unchallenged – that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.” End quote.

Five months later, in August of this year, speaking at the VFW, the President made a promise to America’s armed forces. “I will give you a clear mission,” he said, “defined goals, and the equipment and support you need to get the job done. That’s my commitment to you.”

It’s time for President Obama to make good on his promise. The White House must stop dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger.

Make no mistake, signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries. Waffling, while our troops on the ground face an emboldened enemy, endangers them and hurts our cause.

Recently, President Obama’s advisors have decided that it’s easier to blame the Bush Administration than support our troops. This weekend they leveled a charge that cannot go unanswered. The President’s chief of staff claimed that the Bush Administration hadn’t asked any tough questions about Afghanistan, and he complained that the Obama Administration had to start from scratch to put together a strategy.

In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that repeatedly went into the country, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt. The new strategy they embraced in March, with a focus on counterinsurgency and an increase in the numbers of troops, bears a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them. They made a decision – a good one, I think – and sent a commander into the field to implement it.

Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced. It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity.

It’s worth recalling that we were engaged in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, supporting the Mujahadeen against the Soviets. That was a successful policy, but then we pretty much put Afghanistan out of our minds. While no one was watching, what followed was a civil war, the takeover by the Taliban, and the rise of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. All of that set in motion the events of 9/11. When we deployed forces eight years ago this month, it was to make sure Afghanistan would never again be a training ground for the killing of Americans. Saving untold thousands of lives is still the business at hand in this fight. And the success of our mission in Afghanistan is not only essential, it is entirely achievable with enough troops and enough political courage.

Then there’s the matter of how to handle the terrorists we capture in this ongoing war. Some of them know things that, if shared, can save a good many innocent lives. When we faced that problem in the days and years after 9/11, we made some basic decisions. We understood that organized terrorism is not just a law-enforcement issue, but a strategic threat to the United States.

At every turn, we understood as well that the safety of the country required collecting information known only to the worst of the terrorists. We had a lot of blind spots – and that’s an awful thing, especially in wartime. With many thousands of lives potentially in the balance, we didn’t think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.

The intelligence professionals who got the answers we needed from terrorists had limited time, limited options, and careful legal guidance. They got the baddest actors we picked up to reveal things they really didn’t want to share. In the case of Khalid Sheik Muhammed, by the time it was over he was not was not only talking, he was practically conducting a seminar, complete with chalkboards and charts. It turned out he had a professorial side, and our guys didn’t mind at all if classes ran long. At some point, the mastermind of 9/11 became an expansive briefer on the operations and plans of al-Qaeda. It happened in the course of enhanced interrogations. All the evidence, and common sense as well, tells us why he started to talk.

The debate over intelligence gathering in the seven years after 9/11 involves much more than historical accuracy. What we’re really debating are the means and resolve to protect this country over the next few years, and long after that. Terrorists and their state sponsors must be held accountable, and America must remain on the offensive against them. We got it right after 9/11. And our government needs to keep getting it right, year after year, president after president, until the danger is finally overcome.

Our administration always faced its share of criticism, and from some quarters it was always intense. That was especially so in the later years of our term, when the dangers were as serious as ever, but the sense of general alarm after 9/11 was a fading memory. Part of our responsibility, as we saw it, was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America … and not to let 9/11 become the prelude to something much bigger and far worse.

Eight years into the effort, one thing we know is that the enemy has spent most of this time on the defensive – and every attempt to strike inside the United States has failed. So you would think that our successors would be going to the intelligence community saying, “How did you did you do it? What were the keys to preventing another attack over that period of time?”

Instead, they’ve chosen a different path entirely – giving in to the angry left, slandering people who did a hard job well, and demagoguing an issue more serious than any other they’ll face in these four years. No one knows just where that path will lead, but I can promise you this: There will always be plenty of us willing to stand up for the policies and the people that have kept this country safe.

On the political left, it will still be asserted that tough interrogations did no good, because this is an article of faith for them, and actual evidence is unwelcome and disregarded. President Obama himself has ruled these methods out, and when he last addressed the subject he filled the air with vague and useless platitudes. His preferred device is to suggest that we could have gotten the same information by other means. We’re invited to think so. But this ignores the hard, inconvenient truth that we did try other means and techniques to elicit information from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and other al-Qaeda operatives, only turning to enhanced techniques when we failed to produce the actionable intelligence we knew they were withholding. In fact, our intelligence professionals, in urgent circumstances with the highest of stakes, obtained specific information, prevented specific attacks, and saved American lives.

In short, to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program’s legal underpinnings and safeguards. Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country’s name and in our country’s cause. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme. In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed.

For all that we’ve lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings – and least of all can that be said of our armed forces and intelligence personnel. They have done right, they have made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them.

Last January 20th, our successors in office were given the highest honors that the voters of this country can give any two citizens. Along with that, George W. Bush and I handed the new president and vice president both a record of success in the war on terror, and the policies to continue that record and ultimately prevail. We had been the decision makers, but those seven years, four months, and nine days without another 9/11 or worse, were a combined achievement: a credit to all who serve in the defense of America, including some of the finest people I’ve ever met.

What the present administration does with those policies is their call to make, and will become a measure of their own record. But I will tell you straight that I am not encouraged when intelligence officers who acted in the service of this country find themselves hounded with a zeal that should be reserved for America’s enemies. And it certainly is not a good sign when the Justice Department is set on a political mission to discredit, disbar, or otherwise persecute the very people who helped protect our nation in the years after 9/11.

There are policy differences, and then there are affronts that have to be answered every time without equivocation, and this is one of them. We cannot protect this country by putting politics over security, and turning the guns on our own guys.

We cannot hope to win a war by talking down our country and those who do its hardest work – the men and women of our military and intelligence services. They are, after all, the true keepers of the flame.

Thank you very much.

Obituary - Disner

Disner, Bernard - March 8 2006 of Mt. Laurel. Husband of Natalie (nee Brody) Disner. Father of Arlyn Chester and Don Disner. Brother of Frances Biddle Marion Zieman ...

Published in the Courier-Post on 3/9/2006


DISNER
BERNARD, March 8, 2006 of Mt. Laurel. Husband of Natalie (nee Brody) Disner. Father of Arlyn Chester and Don Disner. Brother of Frances Biddle, Marion Zieman and Marjorie Newman. Grandfather of Amanda Scott and Amiee Chester. Relatives and friends are invited to Graveside Services Friday, 1 P.M. at Crescent Mem. Park (Sec. G), Pennsauken. The family will return to the late residence and respectfully request contributions in his memory be made to the National Parkinson Disease Foundation.

Published on 2006-03-09, Page , Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) and Philadelphia Daily News (PA)

Obama, Dictators and democrats: How many rogue nations can President Obama hold in one hand? By Daniel Henninger

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574444890430083018.html

In his Inaugural Address, President Obama spoke directly to the world's rogue nations. "[W]e will extend a hand," he said, "if you are willing to unclench your fist."

Question: How many rogue nations can you hold in one hand? Let's try to count.

Iran remains rogue No. 1. The world is riveted by the expanding Iranian nuclear threat, and one might expect a mess of this magnitude would occupy most of the diplomatic energies of any presidency. But this one has time for more.

The Monday after last Friday's bombshell that Iran has a hidden nuclear site, the State Department announced the start of a "direct dialogue" with Burma's hopeless junta. The administration has dispatched a special envoy to Sudan and its genocidal leader, Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad got his own Obama envoy, plus a visit from John Kerry.

At the Summit of the Americas, Mr. Obama himself did meet and greets for "dialogue" with Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Bolivia's Evo Morales, and reached out to Cuba's Raul Castro. Mr. Obama then dropped in on Russia's leaders for a "reset."

There is something slightly weird about all this activity. If the Obama team wanted to make a really significant break from past Bush policy, it would say it was not going to just talk with the world's worst strongmen but would give equal, public status to their democratic opposition groups. Instead, the baddest actors in the world get face time with Barack Obama, but their struggling opposition gets invisibility.

Iran's extraordinary and brave popular opposition, which broke out again this week at two universities, seems to have earned these pro-democracy Iranians nothing in the calculations of U.S. policy.

With Iran, one could argue that stopping the mullahs' nuclear program trumps the aspirations of its population. What about poor, harmless Guinea?

In July, Mr. Obama made a historic journey to Africa, giving a widely praised speech in Ghana in support of self-help and self-determination. In August, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton grandly visited seven African nations with a similar message. Three days ago in Guinea, government troops fired on a pro-democracy rally estimated at 50,000 in the capital of Conakry, killing more than 150 people. The State Department got out a written statement of condemnation. Why is it not possible for President Obama or Secretary of State Clinton, having encouraged these aspirations, to speak publicly in their defense, rather than let democratic movements rise, fall and die?

In trying to plumb why the U.S. won't promote or protect its own best idea, one starts with Mr. Obama's remarks at the "reset" visit in Moscow: "America cannot and should not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country."

Setting aside that no one is talking about the U.S. literally "imposing" a government in this day and age, what is one to make of a left-of-center American political leader taking such a diffident stance toward democratic movements? The people who live under the sway of the top dog in all the nations that have earned high-level Obama envoys are the world's poor, and one would expect the social-justice left to support them. That may no longer be true on the American or European left.

Transforming dictatorships into nations with reasonably competitive democracies increases the odds that their people in time will find a competent leader, such as Colombia's Alvaro Uribe, who will introduce productive economic policies. That makes it more likely these peoples will join the global trading system, raising their incomes.

For the American left, now fused to financial support from domestic labor unions, the world's dispossessed represent a threat—less costly labor selling goods into the high-cost world.

Active help for democratic oppositions in Venezuela, Syria, Egypt, Iran or even Guinea hardly serves this interest. Today, social justice stops at the water's edge. Even as Mr. Obama extends his hand to a Chávez, Morales or Castro, he makes no effort to finish free-trade agreements with certifiably democratic Colombia and Panama.

The one thing the Obama tack of talking to dictators and slow-walking free trade assures is that many of these populations may be run indefinitely by economically incompetent psychopaths who pose no threat to the interests of American labor and their Democratic dependents. This anti-democratic protectionism of course has fans on the xenophobic right in the U.S., too.

This is a risky business. What if the new authoritarian, make-believe democratic model gains? Our dictator chat partners are getting brazen about staging and then rigging elections. Iran's mullahs proved there will be no sustained push-back from the U.S. or Western Europe to a fraudulent election. Instead the great powers' energies go into pounding tiny Honduras, which tried to save itself from the Chávez- and Castro-admiring Manuel Zelaya.

What if the world's real democrats, after enough bullets and dungeon time, lose belief in the American democracy's support for them on this central idea? They may come to regard their betters in the U.S. and Europe as inhabiting a world less animated by democratic belief than democratic decadence.

Write to henninger@wsj.com

Beware Of New Regulation Of Derivatives By Rep. Eric Cantor

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=509198

10/15/2009

In the face of public outcry over the nation's financial crisis, a tried-and-true tradition of finger-pointing is under way in Washington.

Instead of taking a measured approach to identifying the root causes of our financial collapse, many in Washington are focusing on an easy villain that many Americans don't appreciate: the derivatives market.

This sentiment drove the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday to pass new rules that could have far-reaching constraints on derivatives and may irreparably harm American businesses and consumers in the future.

Rather than the tool for gross financial manipulation it is portrayed to be, the derivatives market plays a very important role in solidifying the competitiveness of American businesses.

Derivatives enable businesses and investors of all sorts, especially nonfinancial corporations, to hedge risk efficiently. The benefits of successful risk management include greater confidence and predictability in the underlying business, which leads to more jobs and ultimately trickles down to consumers in the form of lower prices.

To be sure, Republicans believe that more transparency in the financial markets is always better. A system that requires companies to report their derivatives trades to a regulator monitoring risk makes more sense as long as that information is protected from competitors who could benefit unfairly if all hedging information were forced to be openly disclosed.

We also agree that the growth of listed and centrally cleared derivatives is a positive step that should be encouraged.

Yet there's a fine line between enforcing smart regulations designed to keep innovative markets functioning and erecting hurdles that restrict American companies' ability to compete on the global stage.

House Republicans fear that line is now being blurred. By granting government regulators the power to impose on an ad hoc basis stiff collateral and margin requirements, legislation passed Wednesday in the House Financial Services Committee could spell disaster for the over-the-counter derivatives market.

While today many hedgers are able to enter into OTC derivative contracts with willing counterparties based on their credit rating, the new regulations will force companies to choose between two difficult options: Use up their precious working capital to satisfy unnecessarily burdensome requirements or utilize exchange-listed derivatives that likely provide an imperfect hedge to the underlying risk.

Neither of these choices is attractive. The first means capital that should be helping companies grow, invest and create jobs now has to be diverted to manage risk.

The latter option leaves companies without customized options to manage their risk; they thus have to compensate by, for instance, charging higher prices. It also introduces a new "basis risk," which is the potential for the movement in price between the risk the company is attempting to hedge and the actual risk that the listed or centrally cleared product hedges.

Once again, the result is the need to compensate by investing less elsewhere or raising prices.

As we see, rushed government action can have unintended consequences that can hurt job growth and set our businesses on a weaker competitive footing. Congress should give thoughtful consideration to these ramifications before the bill comes before the full House in the coming weeks.

• Cantor is the House Republican Whip.

Dems Go Nuclear

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=509361

10/16/2009

Health Care: Democrats seem set to use the "nuclear option" to ram their government health takeover into law. Bipartisanship already looked dead; now it looks extinct.

The health care revolution the Democratic Congress has planned — with its inevitable medical rationing, thousands of dollars in increased insurance premiums, and coverage of illegal aliens — may get placed on the familiar fast track used to spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars this year.

Instead of the 60 votes needed in the Senate if proper parliamentary rules were followed, passing this reshaping of the medical system as a "budget reconciliation" measure would mean only a simple majority was needed.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., accused of cheating on his taxes, last week held a hearing to let the House version of the health reform bill be passed this way. As the Washington weekly Human Events reports, Democratic leaders "have apparently invoked the 'nuclear option' to shut out Republicans and ensure the bill is passed before the end of the year."

So all those "town hells" during the summer, where senators and congressmen were given an earful about passing secretly written thousand-page bills without reading them, will be ignored.

In the age of the Internet, Congress refuses to post for computer access the most consequential legislation in history, as far as its effect on human lives (and deaths) is concerned, before voting on it.

The people will have to wait until it's all signed, sealed and delivered before finding out exactly how this government-imposed monster will devour health care as Americans have known it for all their lives.

And why? Because both congressional Democrats and the White House are afraid of the power of the people. Just as they are both afraid to give the opposing party a seat at the negotiating table.

Rangel didn't allow Republicans to offer amendments in committee. Why not? Fear that Democrats might be embarrassed by having to reject a Republican amendment to protect Medicare, for one thing. And fear in general that the people might catch wind of a few bipartisan ideas that sound more sensible than their big government solutions.

The magnitude of what Congress is about to do is staggering. The federal government is about to begin dictating Americans' behavior regarding the most intimate and vital area of life — health.

You play ball with Uncle Sam and pay thousands and thousands of dollars for far more expensive insurance than what you're now used to, or you get slapped with fines. And as yet we don't know how heavy those fines will be — or if noncooperation with the new system will mean more than fines.

Doesn't Congress owe it to us to provide time to mull this over before it takes force?

Shouldn't the exact wording of this radical transformation of our medical system be available on the Internet for weeks before a floor vote takes place?

And shouldn't medical experts, health care providers and legal analysts get the opportunity to read every word of such a bill carefully, then give their well-considered analysis to concerned Americans?

Apparently not, according to those now running Washington.

To them, this is a rare opportunity to take a giant step toward single-payer, European-style socialized medicine. And they have no intention of letting the people stop them.

The Race Card, Football and Me: My critics would have you believe no conservative meets NFL 'standards.' By Rush Limbaugh

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704322004574477021697942920.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTTopCarousel

OCTOBER 16, 2009



David Checketts, an investor and owner of sports teams, approached me in late May about investing in the St. Louis Rams football franchise. As a football fan, I was intrigued. I invited him to my home where we discussed it further. Even after informing him that some people might try to make an issue of my participation, Mr. Checketts said he didn't much care. I accepted his offer.

It didn't take long before my name was selectively leaked to the media as part of the Checketts investment group. Shortly thereafter, the media elicited comments from the likes of Al Sharpton. In 1998 Mr. Sharpton was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $65,000 for falsely accusing a New York prosecutor of rape in the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. He also played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews "diamond merchants") and 1995 Freddie's Fashion Mart riot.

Not to be outdone, Jesse Jackson, whose history includes anti-Semitic speech (in 1984 he referred to Jews as "Hymies" and to New York City as "Hymietown" in a Washington Post interview) chimed in. He found me unfit to be associated with the NFL. I was too divisive and worse. I was accused of once supporting slavery and having praised Martin Luther King Jr.'s murderer, James Earl Ray.

Next came writers in the sports world, like the Washington Post's Michael Wilbon. He wrote this gem earlier this week: "I'm not going to try and give specific examples of things Limbaugh has said over the years because I screwed up already doing that, repeating a quote attributed to Limbaugh (about slavery) which he has told me he simply did not say and does not reflect his feelings. I take him at his word. . . . "

Mr. Wilbon wasn't alone. Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source.

I never said I supported slavery and I never praised James Earl Ray. How sick would that be? Just as sick as those who would use such outrageous slanders against me or anyone else who never even thought such things. Mr. Wilbon refuses to take responsibility for his poison pen, writing instead that he will take my word that I did not make these statements; others, like Rick Sanchez of CNN, essentially used the same sleight-of-hand.

The sports media elicited comments from a handful of players, none of whom I can recall ever meeting. Among other things, at least one said he would never play for a team I was involved in given my racial views. My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race? Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race? Those controversial racial views?

The NFL players union boss, DeMaurice Smith, jumped in. A Washington criminal defense lawyer, Democratic Party supporter and Barack Obama donor, he sent a much publicized email to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying that it was important for the league to reject discrimination and hatred.

When Mr. Goodell was asked about me, he suggested that my 2003 comment criticizing the media's coverage of Donovan McNabb—in which I said the media was cheerleading Mr. McNabb because they wanted a successful black quarterback—fell short of the NFL's "high standard." High standard? Half a decade later, the media would behave the same way about the presidential candidacy of Mr. Obama.

Having brought me into his group, Mr. Checketts now wanted a way out. He asked me to resign. I told him no way. I had done nothing wrong. I had not uttered the words these people were putting in my mouth. And I would not bow to their libels and pressure. He would have to drop me from the group. A few days later, he did.

As I explained on my radio show, this spectacle is bigger than I am on several levels. There is a contempt in the news business, including the sportswriter community, for conservatives that reflects the blind hatred espoused by Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson. "Racism" is too often their sledgehammer. And it is being used to try to keep citizens who don't share the left's agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us. It was on display many years ago in an effort to smear Clarence Thomas with racist stereotypes and keep him off the Supreme Court. More recently, it was employed against patriotic citizens who attended town-hall meetings and tea-party protests.

These intimidation tactics are working and spreading, and they are a cancer on our society.

Mr. Limbaugh is a nationally syndicated talk radio host.