A Morning of Minarets and Mueslli

Today, was another morning of shock and awe for the Associated Press and CNN and MSNBC and all because the Swiss said that the predominant spires in their land should be their own, the natural ones, the Alps.

Most of the American-based news outlets were shocked by the Swiss referendum which mandated no more minarets on mosques in that country and they could not understand why.

But I can.

The Swiss are indeed a breed apart. They have survived as a tiny country for a 1000 years or more for a couple of reasons. Every dictator, every potentate, every king or emperor or Bernie Madoff needs a place to put his stash with no questions asked.

Well the Swiss did all that and more. They took Nazi gold during World War II and placed those ingots into safe keeping even when the provenance of that gold was not clean. They knew that some had been ripped out of the mouths of dead Jews with pliers.

So, clearly, the Swiss are not exactly the stuff of adverts just for cheese and yodeling and the happy life,

In fact, they are very conservative and yesterday they proved it. And it wasn't even close as shown by the fact that the measure passed by a margin of 58 to 43 percent out of more than 3 million votes. Anyone who knows anything about Western Europe is going to tell you pretty much the same thing which is that academics and politicians may mouth the platitudes but the indigenous populations tell a very different story in the pubs and their homes.

In the case of the Swiss, they fear being overrun and they see that the best way to protect their way of life is to hold the stakes for all comers while limiting the impact these immigrants from Kosovo, Albania and Turkey have on the local scene

Now I can’t claim first hand knowledge for all of this as far as Switzerland is concerned but I can tell you a little bit about England.

The national flag of England is not the Union Jack. The flag of England is the cross of St. George which is a red cross on a white background and its derivative is seen on the shirts of the national soccer team. The Muslims resident in England objected because it looked like a Crusader’s shield.

My own daughter’s employer, a bank, used to run a campaign to attract savers which employed a piggy bank. Well that clearly had to go as well because pigs are anathema to Muslims..

Eventually, even the Swiss were not going to take it anymore.

I doubt they will be the last.

It may be a brave New World but I don't like it.

A few days ago, you may have a read a post on this site which dared to poke a toe into the piranha-infested waters of “Global Warming Science” and the issue of what has started to become known as “Climate-Gate”.

Now, it’s true that most American media outlets ignored the entire maelstrom because:

They didn’t want to even contemplate that they’d been so wrong for so long.

The Obama Administration had not given them the green-light. (No pun intended but welcomed.)

And no Americans were involved.

And you can put those in any order you want.

Or add your own as well.

But, as Obama plans to head out to Denmark for the biggest international yawn in decades, we now learn that Americans are indeed involved and one of ‘em is Obama’s Climate Czar; no wonder the White House went quiet.

Here are a couple of Morris’ Maxims to live by.

For a start, when a politician says he wants to be completely honest, you know he doesn’t. And when that same politician goes quiet he’s trying to think up an excuse but he’s trying to figure out whatever it is you caught him or her doing.

The Czar in question is one, Dr. John P. Holdren and he’s up to his ears in Climategate. Holdren is an intractable global warming activist with no time for climate change skepticism.

In a New York Times article, he contended that such questioning “has delayed. and continues to delay, the development of the political consensus that will be needed if society is to embrace remedies commensurate with the challenge.”

He has also become something of a celebrity, rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood luminaries at President Obama’s state dinner Tuesday night honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and repeatedly appearing as a guest on the David Letterman show.

But the Canada Free Press this week revealed that the former Harvard professor and Al Gore global warming adviser features prominently in the thousands of e-mails and other files made public after the hacking last week of a computer server used by the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit.

The most embarrassing item for the Obama Administration may be a 2003 exchange between Holdren and TCSDaily.com editor-in-chief Nick Schulz. Schulz challenged Holdren on whether downplaying the significance of the Medieval Warm Period required “what lawyers call the burden of proof.”

Holdren’s retort contained a remarkable assertion coming from a scientist: “In practice, burden of proof is an evolving thing – it evolves as the amount of evidence relevant to a particular proposition grows.”

Huh?

Canada Free Press columnist and Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball says of the correspondence with Schulz that Holdren’s “entire defense and position devolves to a political position.”

The CRU documents also find Holdren disparaging solar physicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, contrarians regarding surface temperatures over the past millennium, who were colleagues of Holdren at Harvard, and Ball wonders if Holdren may have intimidated the two scientists before they “suddenly and politely withdrew from the fray,” as Ball describes it.

Some will accept my contention that I don’t kick a downed man unless he’s a Nazi while others would believe I would but, in this case there really is more

Dr. Holdren has a history of alarmingly extremist views. He co-authored a 1977 book, “Ecoscience: Population Resources, Environment,” advocating compulsory abortion for purposes of population control, mass sterilization, government-dictated family size like China’s one-child policy, and a “planetary regime” to be policed by the United Nations.

Not long before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion-on-demand throughout America, Holdren co-authored “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions,” which seems to argue that even years after birth a baby is not yet a human being.

“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth,” claims the book’s “Population Limitation” section, “and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.”

Holdren’s “Human Ecology” warns of large-scale disaster that might require “involuntary fertility control” to stop population growth. “Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable idea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying,” the Holdren book suggests.

Hmm!

I’m glad I’m old and not a fetus.

Did you ever try to give a pill to a cat?

European elites often complain that Americans know nothing of the continent from whence most of them hail. They mispronounce names; they mess up the food and, worse yet, their knowledge of history is incomplete or wrong.

Imagine my surprise, then, when an email arrived in response to what I thought was a deliberately innocuous post about Thanksgiving. The thrust of the invective was to take to task the “pen of the Revolution”, one Thomas Jefferson and my initial response was to question the connection between Jefferson and the holiday just past.

As a domestic aside, I’ll make turkey pot pie tomorrow and the rest of the beast goes into the freezer.

But I digress, again, don’t I?

The fact, though, is that the deeds and times of William Bradford and Thomas Jefferson were separated by at least 7 generations. What malfeasance committed by your great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents do you want to own up to and flagellate about. And what difference would it make if you did either of those things.? And that brings to mind the concept of reparation to today’s black community for the obscenity of slavery.

But, again I digress because all this triggered a wider thought. Perhaps it’s all the tryptophan? And this is something I’ve thought long about and frankly, it sticks in my craw. Perhaps the following conclusions are valid or perhaps they’re not or perhaps its somewhere in between.

These United States still represent the greatest power this planet has ever seen and my tax liability is stark witness that we try to use that power for the good of all. I can hear the dismissive snarls already.

Thus, it seems to me that if we were weak, we would not be hated. If we were poor we would not be hated. We are not hated despite the trillions of dollars we give; we are hated because of the trillion dollars.

The hatred that some feel towards this country is not because it attacks their homeland; it is because it keeps their's safe.

Over 2000 years ago, the Romans learned that they should not seek popularity because it was pointless. A world power can have supremacy or be loved but not both. I contend that what is felt towards this nation is 10% disagreement and 90% envy. No man can ever truly forgive his protector. There is no loathing that any man harbors more intense than that towards his benefactor.

Clearly, we are not the first to feel this animus. As I said, the Romans responded with ruthless force of arms and so did the Spanish. In turn, the British responded with languid contempt and now America sends out Obama to apologize. Fat chance!

It used to be called the “White Man’s burden”. Now it’s more like a pill stuck in your throat.

Food, Football and Free Enterprise ...........

As I write this, most American refrigerators have a dead but thawing bird within their Arctic grasps because tomorrow is Thanksgiving and this nation prepares itself to inhale too many calories.

Because I wasn’t here at the time, I escaped the “noble savage saving the white colonialists” as taught in public schools but, nevertheless, 30 plus years of residence has exposed me to the maudlin and political correctness of the Hollywood Left, the fawning of the mainstream media and the best efforts of Hallmark Cards.

Just ask Joseph Goebbels of yesteryear or David Axelrod of today and inherent to both their crafts is a common thread; Within the best lies there is a nugget of truth. The trick for the consumer is to find it. Which takes me back to the liberal version of Thanksgiving and the oft-missed nugget which has never been more appropriate than this year.

On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail from Europe. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from?

Well, the Christian Bible of course because the Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work.

But this was no pleasure cruise and the journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims including Bradford's own wife died of either starvation, sickness, or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper! This is important to understand

Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments.

Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share.

All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. They were, in effect, collectivists!

Now, Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. ... Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn't work! Surprise, surprise, huh?

What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else. But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years -- trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it -- the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson.

“The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing -- as if they were wiser than God."

Then he continued; "'For this community was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense...that was thought injustice.”. Read those words again. The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive.

So what did Bradford's community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and was permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result? “This had very good success,' wrote Bradford, "for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been." Bradford doesn't sound like much of an Obamanista, does he? Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? ... In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves. ... So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians.

Those profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the 'Great Puritan Migration. So the Pilgrims decided to thank G-d for all of their good fortune.

And, let us not overlook the fact that, the salvation of this tiny colony came not wholly from without but largely from within!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Change You Certainly Cannot Believe In .........

They used to say that bad news came in sets of three and perhaps that's true. In which case, perhaps good news comes in twos.

And today was one of those days.

To start with, there was an email from a European friend who referred me, first to a newspaper article and then to the larger book.. The latter is entitled, “The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is The Obsession with Climate Change Turning Out To Be The Most Costly Blunder in History?” and the author is one Christopher Booker. I haven’t read the book yet but I will.

What I have read though, are the revelations emerging from the University of East Anglia in England. And the emails that follow tell a very sorry tale if you care about truth and objective science.

From: Phil Jones. To: Many, November 16, 1999
"I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Critics cite this as evidence that data was manipulated to mask the fact that global temperatures are falling. Prof Jones claims the meaning of "trick" has been misinterpreted

From Phil Jones To: Michael Mann (Pennsylvania State University). July 8, 2004

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

(The IPCC is the UN body charged with monitoring climate change. The scientists did not want it to consider studies that challenge the view that global warming is genuine and man-made.)

From: Kevin Trenberth (US National Center for Atmospheric Research). To: Michael Mann. Oct 12, 2009

The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't... Our observing system is inadequate"
Prof Trenberth appears to accept a key argument of global warming sceptics - that there is no evidence temperatures have increased over the past 10 years.

From: Kevin Trenberth (US National Center for Atmospheric Research). To: Michael Mann. Oct 12, 2009

I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”

Prof Jones appears to be lobbying for the dismissal of the editor of Climate Research, a scientific journal that published papers downplaying climate change.

From Phil Jones. To: Michael Mann. Date: May 29, 2008"C

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise."

Climate change sceptics tried to use Freedom of Information laws to obtain raw climate data submitted to an IPCC report known as AR4. The scientists did not want their email exchanges about the data to be made public.

From: Michael Mann. To: Phil Jones and Gabi Hegerl (University of Edinburgh). Date: Aug 10, 2004

"Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future."

In short, these "scientists" make no attempt to hide their disdain for climate change sceptics who request more information about their work.

In fact, I've just offered snippets because there are pages and pages of this stuff. The Kool-Aid drinkers will dismiss all of this as yet another vast Right Wing Conspiracy. And if it turns out to be nothing more than that, I will profer a public retraction in a heart beat.

Now, when you add all that to the revelations in Der Spiegel, there is clearly “something rotten in the “State of Denmark” as Hamlet affirmed.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Closer analysis of these scientific findings reveals that 3, repeat 3, trees from a forest in Siberia were chosen for a study of the rings under their bark. Just 3. The rest of the trees perhaps did not fit the preconceptions and so they were used to toast marshmallows one presumes.

Since the lies, damned lies and statistics have peeked out from beneath the rock, there has been a scurry of activity as the wood louses of science fight each other to flee the light of day.

Leading the flight was the New York Times who harrumphed that they would not publish any content that was not meant for the public eye. One is forced to ask if they drew the same veil of propriety over the Pentagon Papers and the rest of the Watergate revelations.

More and more, it becomes clear that the whole “Global Warming” myth was dreamed up for two reasons. For a start, adoption of Kyoto or Cap and Trade and the goals of Copenhagen were designed to bring the US economy to its knees. I thank G-d once again for our Constitution because, so far at least, only the Senate can ratify treaties. Sorry Obama!

Secondly, it was designed to scare liitle kids to death. Now, who could not wish a Polar Bear well? They’re big and furry and have huge floppy paws. Aw……..

And their population is increasing. Good news for kids and bad news for Al.

There’s one thing that worries me about all this.

Can you imagine how many text books will have to be changed and how much that will cost? Or how much money have we spent on meaningless doctoral theses?

Finally, I used to live in Northern California and, twice a day, I commuted across the Golden Gate Bridge. Now, in that part of the world you get used to nuts and you get used to delays on the bridge.

This day though was special. Because there, chained to a span was Ted Danson complete with a sign that warned that the planet had only 10 more years. I wish we'd left hm there. Perhaps the odd commuter would have poked up a sponge soaked in a good Dry Creek Merlot. But, it wouldn't have been me.

Well, we’ve lasted much longer than that since that day in 1987 and you’d think that he’d be happy along with all the rest of the PCH. But, I doubt they are.

Or let me ask it another way, If the planet isn't warming, is that good news or bad?

Or, are liberals ever really happy? Or is it that only unhappy people turn to liberalism as the last resort?

There's Palin and there's Polls...........

I wouldn’t be surprised if one reader took me to task about the statement I’m about to make, but still ………..

Grand Rapids, in the great state of Michigan, is hardly the center of the universe nor even the crossroads of the nation but it didn’t seem that way last week. It’s not that nothing much ever happens there but, as I can attest, it is the site of one of the best presidential libraries I’ve seen, namely that of President Gerald Ford, which stands on the banks of the Grand River as it tumbles its way towards the lake. And I’m sure there are rapids as well but it’s just that I haven’t seen them as far as I know.

Anyway, on a cold and wet November evening, a line of people began to form which, by next morning, had swelled to a crowd estimated to be in the thousands for a book signing by one Sarah Palin. You know her; the ex-governor of Alaska; John McCain’s running mate; an attractive and smart woman hated and reviled by the drive-by media. Then of course she also earned the ultimate accolade by being lampooned on “Saturday Night Live”.

Ever since Ms. Palin came into the national spotlight those wise arbiters of the political scene have sneered, ridiculed and denigrated this woman and have never stopped reassuring us of her irrelevance in the grand scheme of things as they see it.

When Al Gore’s now infamous treatise on global warming appeared the Associated Press assigned 1 reporter to fact-check the tome. That same organization put 11 people on the case of Ms. Palin’s book. MSNBC dispatched 17 reporters to Grand Rapids and one of them, the intrepid Norah O’Donnell, was convinced that a Pulitzer Prize was in the offing when she decided to grill a 17-year old girl who was one of those waiting in line. Unfortunately for the unsuspecting and overly confident Ms. O’Donnell, she encountered a very erudite high school Junior who knew more about the Constitution than she did herself and so she was forced to slink off to go in search of weaker prey.

And it wasn’t just in Grand Rapids as the book sold 300,000 copies nationwide the first day and that didn’t include the pre-launch orders.

Thus, we must ask the question. If Sarah Palin is such a non-entity and irrelevant to the political scene how come all the media scrutiny? Why do they fear her as a force for the Right and as a possible candidate at some point?

The answer is that more people in this country see themselves as conservative rather than liberal and, as it stands today, 74% of Republicans do not feel that their representatives on Capitol Hill are in touch with that mood. Contrast that with the fact that 59% of likely Republican voters say that Sarah Palin shares their values and only 18% see her as a divisive force within the GOP.

While all this was going on, Obama returned from another apology tour of the world with no agreement on anything and no achievement either unless you count another flub of protocol.

No wonder, therefore, that Rasmussen reports a minus 14% rating overall and every other, more granular poll, from the Afghan war to Gitmo to the proposed trial in New York City to healthcare presents very bad news for Axelrod et al.

It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch ........

However, the rise of conservatism, personified for now at least, by Sarah Palin may worry Obama more than all the other polls I just mentioned.

Could it be that the site of remembrance for one conservative President could be the phoenix for another?

How Sweet It Is!

The liberals among my readership were hoping, pehaps, that the hiatus was due to some incurable malady. Well it wasn’t, but just because I had an old school friend here as a house guest did not mean I had suspended my hearing nor my disbelief.

A week in politics is a long time and it’s even longer for a blogger. The temptation is to try to catch up which is both impossible and dumb because the world has moved on.

So, I’m not going to talk about rationed mammograms. I’ll let Kathleen Sebellius swing on her self-built gallows by the side of her twisting and long-dead sisters.

And, today we can add cervical cancer screening to the growing list of healthcare rationing indictments.

Nor will I dwell on the fiasco of misspent stimulus money in places that don’t exist that didn’t create jobs that weren’t. I did that weeks ago. Remember that little town in Texas? The post was called “A Tale of Two Cities”.

Instead, I’m going to fast forward to Al Gore and the subject of global warming that isn’t. I was going to say poor Al but that is clearly not true because Al has made millions out of the myth of the demise of polar bears by premature drowning.

Al was on “The Tonight Show” with Conan O’Brien a couple of nights ago and was extolling the idea of population growth limitation in order to eliminate global warming. Now let’s take ‘em one at a time. Al’s thrust this time was to push the concept of geo-thermal energy and opined that the potential was limitless because of the “millions of degrees” locked up in the planet’s core.

Well, it’s true that nobody knows the true number but every opinion says it’s somewhere between 5 and 8 thousand. Now that’s not something that your average Joe might know but this is Al, the self-proclaimed guru, a Nobel laureate as well,. But then so is Arafat for murder and Obama for nothing.

But I can’t leave “global warming” without mentioning an article from the latest issue of “Der Spiegel” reporting a study from the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg which concluded that the planet Earth has not warmed one iota for the last ten years.

Now there's "An Inconvenient Truth" if ever I heard one and it will surely do nothing to spur international action at the highly-touted conference next month in Copenhagen.

So now, let’s turn to population growth.

The “Green Fringe” point to China’s policy of one child per couple as the way, the truth and the light . Now, I’ll make the math as easy as possible but the logical end to this program is that one poor working sap in Shanghai could wind up supporting 2 parents and 4 grandparents. This is clearly unsustainable under any economic model that can be constructed. Something has to give and perhaps the easiest way is to get people to die sooner.

What better way than to ration medical care such as mammograms and pap smears. For a start, the women die earlier and they clearly can’t have more kids. So in one fell swoop, we reduce the population which pleases Al and his followers and we please Obama by cutting medical costs.

How's all that lovely Hope and Change working for ya' Huh?

Follow the Money ............

I tore up my AARP membership when I realized that one of their much-vaunted programs relative to car insurance was ripping me off.

For those outside these United States or who hail from Lake Havasu City and, come to think about it that’s pretty much the same thing, AARP stands for “American Association of Retired Persons”.

This “worthy” bunch is supposed to lobby on behalf of the senior citizenry in this country and therefore their support for the Pelosi bill on healthcare was and is puzzling to many. To so many in fact, that literally hundreds of thousands of equally frustrated seniors lobbied the AARP offices by ‘phone and email and put teeth into their objections by canceling their subscriptions too.

Why the health reform endorsement by AARP when it is very clear that the bill, if passed in anything like its current form, will severely impact Medicare which most seniors rely on to a greater or lesser extent?

Well here’s the dirty little secret.

AARP collects royalties on "Medigap ," a privately purchased insurance coverage that helps pay some of the health-care costs that Medicare doesn't cover.

However, seniors have the option of joining Medicare Advantage plans, allowing them to use Medicare funds to purchase private insurance plans that offer extra benefits and lower copayments than the Original Medicare Plan. An estimated 10.2 million seniors have enrolled in Medicare Advantage.

When seniors enroll in Medicare Advantage plans, they often drop Medigap policies because Medigap plans won't pay deductibles, copayments or other cost-sharing under the Medicare health plan. The switch slashes Medigap revenues - and simultaneously impacts AARP royalties from Medigap insurance.

However, Section 1161 of the House bill would slash payments to Medicare Advantage health plans used by 20 percent of seniors and cause them to lose some benefits, including vision and dental coverage.

According to the Galen Institute, one of the leading health-care policy organizations in the country, AARP saw that it would lose revenue if it didn't stop the Medicare Advantage programs.

The Galen Institute says the House bill would dramatically cut money out of Medicare Advantage programs, forcing people to need the Medigap policies that are such a big cash cow for the AARP. The legislation would kill competition that the AARP has with these Medicare Advantage programs, and it boosts the number of people who need the Medigap insurance because Medicare is going to become an even more deficient program than it is now.

According to the AARP website, the group promises seniors it will be a "voice in Washington and in your state, representing you on issues like Medicare, Social Security and consumer safety."

But the majority of the money AARP collects doesn't come from its annual $16 membership dues.

According to AARP's 2008 consolidated financial statements, the group received nearly $653 million in royalties from private insurance companies that sold products referred by AARP in 2008. It also received an additional $120 million for the ads placed in its publications.

By contrast, AARP collected $249 million in membership dues last year.

And now, as Paul Harvey used to put it, you know the rest of the story.

Sometimes less is more but not when it's the Government

You have to be more than a little thick-skinned to write a Blog.

Especially this kind of Blog because the subject triggers very scary reactions from some who have been friends for decades. But, at the same time, I know that my hit rate is in the thousands. And that’s even more scary

Today was one of those days. I got a “nasty-gram” from someone who is very dear to me whether she knows it or not. But in the same flood of stuff to my “Inbox” I read mail from new subscribers who can’t get enough. I’m honored and scared all at the same time.

Anyway, today’s dissenter took me to task over my assertion that the House Bill on Healthcare, catchily known as H.R. 3962, would create all kinds of new boards, bureaucracies, commissions, and programs.

Listed below, complete with Section and Page numbers, is Speaker Pelosi's proposed governmental infrastructure. And I’ll let it speak for itself:-

1. Retiree Reserve Trust Fund (Section 111(d), p. 61)
2. Grant program for wellness programs to small employers (Section 112, p. 62)
3. Grant program for State health access programs (Section 114, p. 72)
4. Program of administrative simplification (Section 115, p. 76)
5. Health Benefits Advisory Committee (Section 223, p. 111)
6. Health Choices Administration (Section 241, p. 131)
7. Qualified Health Benefits Plan Ombudsman (Section 244, p. 138)
8. Health Insurance Exchange (Section 201, p. 155)
9. Program for technical assistance to employees of small businesses buying Exchange coverage (Section 305(h), p. 191)
10. Mechanism for insurance risk pooling to be established by Health Choices Commissioner (Section 306(b), p. 194)
11. Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund (Section 307, p. 195)
12. State-based Health Insurance Exchanges (Section 308, p. 197)
13. Grant program for health insurance cooperatives (Section 310, p. 206)
14. "Public Health Insurance Option" (Section 321, p. 211)
15. Ombudsman for "Public Health Insurance Option" (Section 321(d), p. 213)
16. Account for receipts and disbursements for "Public Health Insurance Option" (Section 322(b), p. 215)
17. Telehealth Advisory Committee (Section 1191 (b), p. 589)
18. Demonstration program providing reimbursement for "culturally and linguistically appropriate services" (Section 1222, p. 617)
19. Demonstration program for shared decision making using patient decision aids (Section 1236, p. 648)
20. Accountable Care Organization pilot program under Medicare (Section 1301, p. 653)
21. Independent patient-centered medical home pilot program under Medicare (Section 1302, p. 672)
22. Community-based medical home pilot program under Medicare (Section 1302(d), p. 681)
23. Independence at home demonstration program (Section 1312, p. 718)
24. Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research (Section 1401(a), p. 734)
25. Comparative Effectiveness Research Commission (Section 1401(a), p. 738)
26. Patient ombudsman for comparative effectiveness research (Section 1401(a), p. 753)
27. Quality assurance and performance improvement program for skilled nursing facilities (Section 1412(b)(1), p. 784)
28. Quality assurance and performance improvement program for nursing facilities (Section 1412 (b)(2), p. 786)
29. Special focus facility program for skilled nursing facilities (Section 1413(a)(3), p. 796)
30. Special focus facility program for nursing facilities (Section 1413(b)(3), p. 804)
31. National independent monitor pilot program for skilled nursing facilities and nursing facilities (Section 1422, p. 859)
32. Demonstration program for approved teaching health centers with respect to Medicare GME (Section 1502(d), p. 933)
33. Pilot program to develop anti-fraud compliance systems for Medicare providers (Section 1635, p. 978)
34. Special Inspector General for the Health Insurance Exchange (Section 1647, p. 1000)
35. Medical home pilot program under Medicaid (Section 1722, p. 1058)
36. Accountable Care Organization pilot program under Medicaid (Section 1730A, p. 1073)
37. Nursing facility supplemental payment program (Section 1745, p. 1106)
38. Demonstration program for Medicaid coverage to stabilize emergency medical conditions in institutions for mental diseases (Section 1787, p. 1149)
39. Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund (Section 1802, p. 1162)
40. "Identifiable office or program" within CMS to "provide for improved coordination between Medicare and Medicaid in the case of dual eligibles" (Section 1905, p. 1191)
41. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (Section 1907, p. 1198)
42. Public Health Investment Fund (Section 2002, p. 1214)
43. Scholarships for service in health professional needs areas (Section 2211, p. 1224)
44. Program for training medical residents in community-based settings (Section 2214, p. 1236)
45. Grant program for training in dentistry programs (Section 2215, p. 1240)
46. Public Health Workforce Corps (Section 2231, p. 1253)
47. Public health workforce scholarship program (Section 2231, p. 1254)
48. Public health workforce loan forgiveness program (Section 2231, p. 1258)
49. Grant program for innovations in interdisciplinary care (Section 2252, p. 1272)
50. Advisory Committee on Health Workforce Evaluation and Assessment (Section 2261, p. 1275)
51. Prevention and Wellness Trust (Section 2301, p. 1286)
52. Clinical Prevention Stakeholders Board (Section 2301, p. 1295)
53. Community Prevention Stakeholders Board (Section 2301, p. 1301)
54. Grant program for community prevention and wellness research (Section 2301, p. 1305)
55. Grant program for research and demonstration projects related to wellness incentives (Section 2301, p. 1305)
56. Grant program for community prevention and wellness services (Section 2301, p. 1308)
57. Grant program for public health infrastructure (Section 2301, p. 1313)
58. Center for Quality Improvement (Section 2401, p. 1322)
59. Assistant Secretary for Health Information (Section 2402, p. 1330)
60. Grant program to support the operation of school-based health clinics (Section 2511, p. 1352)
61. Grant program for nurse-managed health centers (Section 2512, p. 1361)
62. Grants for labor-management programs for nursing training (Section 2521, p. 1372)
63. Grant program for interdisciplinary mental and behavioral health training (Section 2522, p. 1382)
64. "No Child Left Unimmunized Against Influenza" demonstration grant program (Section 2524, p. 1391)
65. Healthy Teen Initiative grant program regarding teen pregnancy (Section 2526, p. 1398)
66. Grant program for interdisciplinary training, education, and services for individuals with autism (Section 2527(a), p. 1402)
67. University centers for excellence in developmental disabilities education (Section 2527(b), p. 1410)
68. Grant program to implement medication therapy management services (Section 2528, p. 1412)
69. Grant program to promote positive health behaviors in underserved communities (Section 2530, p. 1422)
70. Grant program for State alternative medical liability laws (Section 2531, p. 1431)
71. Grant program to develop infant mortality programs (Section 2532, p. 1433)
72. Grant program to prepare secondary school students for careers in health professions (Section 2533, p. 1437)
73. Grant program for community-based collaborative care (Section 2534, p. 1440)
74. Grant program for community-based overweight and obesity prevention (Section 2535, p. 1457)
75. Grant program for reducing the student-to-school nurse ratio in primary and secondary schools (Section 2536, p. 1462)
76. Demonstration project of grants to medical-legal partnerships (Section 2537, p. 1464)
77. Center for Emergency Care under the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (Section 2552, p. 1478)
78. Council for Emergency Care (Section 2552, p 1479)
79. Grant program to support demonstration programs that design and implement regionalized emergency care systems (Section 2553, p. 1480)
80. Grant program to assist veterans who wish to become emergency medical technicians upon discharge (Section 2554, p. 1487)
81. Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (Section 2562, p. 1494)
82. National Medical Device Registry (Section 2571, p. 1501)
83. CLASS Independence Fund (Section 2581, p. 1597)
84. CLASS Independence Fund Board of Trustees (Section 2581, p. 1598)
85. CLASS Independence Advisory Council (Section 2581, p. 1602)
86. Health and Human Services Coordinating Committee on Women's Health (Section 2588, p. 1610)
87. National Women's Health Information Center (Section 2588, p. 1611)
88. Centers for Disease Control Office of Women's Health (Section 2588, p. 1614)
89. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Office of Women's Health and Gender-Based Research (Section 2588, p. 1617)
90. Health Resources and Services Administration Office of Women's Health (Section 2588, p. 1618)
91. Food and Drug Administration Office of Women's Health (Section 2588, p. 1621)
92. Personal Care Attendant Workforce Advisory Panel (Section 2589(a)(2), p. 1624)
93. Grant program for national health workforce online training (Section 2591, p. 1629)
94. Grant program to disseminate best practices on implementing health workforce investment programs (Section 2591, p. 1632)
95. Demonstration program for chronic shortages of health professionals (Section 3101, p. 1717)
96. Demonstration program for substance abuse counselor educational curricula (Section 3101, p. 1719)
97. Program of Indian community education on mental illness (Section 3101, p. 1722)
98. Intergovernmental Task Force on Indian environmental and nuclear hazards (Section 3101, p. 1754)
99. Office of Indian Men's Health (Section 3101, p. 1765)
100.Indian Health facilities appropriation advisory board (Section 3101, p. 1774)
101.Indian Health facilities needs assessment workgroup (Section 3101, p. 1775)
102.Indian Health Service tribal facilities joint venture demonstration projects (Section 3101, p. 1809)
103.Urban youth treatment center demonstration project (Section 3101, p. 1873)
104.Grants to Urban Indian Organizations for diabetes prevention (Section 3101, p. 1874)
105.Grants to Urban Indian Organizations for health IT adoption (Section 3101, p. 1877)
106.Mental health technician training program (Section 3101, p. 1898)
107.Indian youth elemental health demonstration project (Section 3101, p. 1909)
108.Program for treatment of child sexual abuse victims and perpetrators (Section 3101, p. 1925)
109.Program for treatment of domestic violence and sexual abuse (Section 3101, p. 1927)
110.Native American Health and Wellness Foundation (Section 3103, p. 1966)
111.Committee for the Establishment of the Native American Health and Wellness Foundation (Section 3103, p. 1968)

I trust you are taking notes as I plan a snap test later in the week.

"I wish his name were Smith."

I’ve known a couple of people who have undergone psychological evaluation and counseling. Who they are and why they did is of no consequence now but both of them reported the same thing, which was that the counselors seemed to be the crazy ones in need of help.

And so it seems to have been at Fort Hood, Texas a couple of days ago. Either that or the shooter is simply a Muslim extremist who, while working at Walter Reed Army Hospital, held seminars trying to explain why all infidels should convert to Islam. And let’s face it, there is little practical difference between the two alternatives.

In addition, the good major is on record trying to draw moral equivalence between a GI who deliberately falls on a live grenade and a Muslim suicide bomber while completely overlooking that the GI dies in order to save lives and the bomber dies in order to take them

Anyway, this perverted individual seems to be the first reported case of PPTSD or Pre-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as he’s never been deployed to any conflict anywhere or so his eventual legal advocate will claim when and if the tragedy comes to trial.

Already, the drive-by news outlets are beginning to portray this Major Hasan as the victim while diluting the trauma done to the murdered and their grieving relatives. Not surprisingly, CNN got it wrong from the get-go as they automatically assumed that the perpetrator had to be an angry Caucasian with probable right-wing militia ties. Wrong!!

I must confess to being torn about Hasan’s eventual fate. Do I want him to die from his wounds or do I want him to be tried for his monstrous act? If it turns out to be the latter, it will at least be under the Uniform Code of Military Justice which, last time I checked, still had hanging on the books.

All of this will be revealed in due course and I suspect that regular readers are scratching heads and wondering when I am going to get to our “fearless” leader and the answer is now.

One of his principal duties is as Commander in Chief and that entails being a leader of troops. Obama emerged on to a lawn at the White House from a meeting involving Native American issues, fully aware of that which had happened in Texas but took minutes to even mention the tragedy.

Now don’t take my word for it because here is a transcript of his words as reported in “The Washington Post” ……….

“Please, everybody, have a seat. Let me first of all just thank Ken and the entire Department of the Interior staff for organizing just an extraordinary conference.

I want to thank my Cabinet members and senior administration officials who participated today. I hear that Dr. Joe Medicine Crow was around, and so I want to give a shout out to that Congressional Medal of Honor winner. It's good to see you.

(APPLAUSE)

My understanding is that you had an extremely productive conference. I want to thank all of you for coming and for your efforts, and I want to give you my solemn guarantee that this is not the end of a process, but the beginning of a process and that we are going to follow up.

(APPLAUSE)

We are going to follow up. Every single member of my team understands that this is a top priority for us. I want you to know that, as I said this morning, this -- this is not something that we just give lip service to. And we are going to keep on working with you to make sure that the first Americans get the best possible chances in life in a way that's consistent with your extraordinary traditions and culture and values.

Now, I have to say, though, that beyond that, I had planned to make some broader remarks about the challenges that lay ahead for Native Americans as well as collaboration with our administration.

But as some of you might have heard, there has been a tragic shooting at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas ................"

This is the leader of troops, many of whom are now dead?

Remember the lampooning of President Bush as he sat in that elementary classroom back in 2001?

But, before I move on, I must point out that Obama awarded the recipient the Medal of Freedom and not the Congressional Medal of Honor and there are good reasons for that. First of all, the latter is awarded for bravery and secondly, as the name implies, it is not awarded by the President.

Then the next day, his Press Secretary Mr.Gibbs promised more as he announced a further statement.

What we got was a “firm promise to lower all flags to half staff until Veterans’ Day”.

And then he couldn’t wait to move onto other things.

For a start, he was breathless to announce that fewer jobs had been lost in October than the month before. This must come as a great comfort to the more than 190,000 Americans who did and who had boosted the total to 10.2%.

Then he went on to assure us that the shortage of H1 N1 vaccine was not his fault.

Is anything?

Finally, I must return to the terrorist murders at Fort Hood and highlight the politically correctness attitudes that allow a Major Hasan to be in a position to do what he did.

One unidentified Army spokesperson said it all. “I wish that his name were Smith”.

And so does CNN. And probably Obama as well.

"By the People"

I just watched a couple of examples of blatant bias on the part of the drive-by media. And they came back to back with no segue in between. The first was a line, (in Brit speak a queue), of people trying to get a shot of the H1 N! ‘flu vaccine somewhere in the Mid-West. It was cold and it was wet and it was miserable. And, it was obvious that there wasn’t going to be enough “stuff” to go around.

The next clip was of Gitmo where in bright sunshine the inmates were getting their H1 NI vaccine.

Is it only me that sees a major disconnect here?

And let’s add another twist. Let’s say that President Bush were still President, (be still my heart) and the same two scenarios were playing out do you think the media coverage would be different? Wouldn’t little Chrissy Matthews be screaming about another Katrina? Except this time the perfidy would be the intent to kill all American babies and not just those of poor blacks in New Orleans.

Sometimes I wish I were an HBO subscriber but, more often than not, I’m glad. I choose to spend my money another way. Let me tell you why.

Obama campaigned hard in New Jersey and Virgina both in person and via media spots. In 2008, he carried both states handily but this time he lost both races heavily. So how did Obama spend Election Night?

He watched an HBO Special about his triumphal election campaign. And that’s not Blogspeak; that’s straight from Robert Gibbs. But wait, it get’s worse.

Also, according to Gibbs, Obama had cooperated in the making of the thing and had already seen it days before. Can you spell Narcissism? Or how about Nero playing the violin ……………?

It’s also illustrative to note that in that very video, Obama is heard to say how much he loves elections but only if I win. Also interesting is the fact that, in the only publiciized race he did not enter, the liberal won.

I can’t believe it’s been a year already since that dark and gloomy day when we learned of Obama’s election but I thought, in the manner of the late night talk shows on television, I’d come up with my Top Ten worst decisions the Prince of Peace has made. And here they are but you can do your own ranking.

Obama saying the Cambridge cops acted "stupidly" in arresting Henry Louis Gates.

As Obama took the side of an old friend against a police officer before he even knew the details, he threw gasoline on simmering racial tensions left over from his election. The White House’s hastily cobbled together an attempt at a solution – the famous “beer summit” – which is probably not what won him the Nobel Peace Prize.


Eight percent unemployment? No.

If the stimulus was a good idea, touting the stimulus too much was definitely not.

Obama’s advisers confidently predicted that unemployment would top out at 8 percent if Congress went along with his push for a $787 billion stimulus package. But unemployment hit 9.8 percent last month and 10 percent isn’t far behind.
The White House said that the economy was actually much worse than the advisers would have known at the time. Still, they broke a cardinal rule of politics – under-promise and over-deliver.


The Olympics bid

Copenhagen was not so wonderful to Barack Obama. More like the agony of defeat. The trip gave fodder to the White House’s critics to argue that the president remains too close to his Windy City political base, and all the big city machine seediness that implies. Not only that, Chicago’s bid was bounced on a first ballot – so much for the power of the global Brand Obama.


He's on Everywhere, All the Time

The downside of the flood the zone media strategy, Obama runs the risk of wearing thin on the American voter. “For a while it looked like he would be on everything from the Home and Garden Channel to Golf Digest,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. “It dilutes the impact of his message and will begin to create voter fatigue from seeing him too much.”


McChrystal outguns Obama

These guys don’t get to be four-star generals without having a finely honed political sensibility, but you’d think the president would be an even better pol than a general.

First Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s go-big troop request was leaked to Bob Woodward – leaker unknown. Then McChrystal used a speech to a London think tank to “pre-but” the case for a smaller force in Afghanistan. By going public with his point of view, McChrystal handed Obama the untenable choice of defying his political base or defying his top general in the field.


No earmarks? Well, maybe just a few . . .billion

Obama campaigned hard against earmarks, but in March, he signed a $410 billion spending measure that was laden with more than $7 billion worth of the targeted spending provisions anyway. The president called the bill “imperfect” but didn’t veto the measure, and sent an early signal that he would bend – even on a core campaign priority.

“He had an opportunity to really be different,” said former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. “He could have dominated and controlled Washington. But instead, he went along with it.

Washington has not changed.”


No vetting the vetters

From Tom Daschle’s Town Cars, to Tim Geithner’s Turbo Tax to Bill Richardson’s federal grand jury troubles, Obama aides early in the year seemed incapable of turning up major problems before they hit the papers.


Gitmo, Year Two

Candidate Obama campaigned on closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, so it seemed to make sense when he set a deadline of January of 2010 to have the facility shuttered. By all accounts, it’s not going to happen. Obama and his team failed to take into account the extreme difficulty of deciding what do with the prisoners there – Congress won’t let them come to prisons here, U.S. allies don’t want them either.


Snubbing the Dalai Lama

The White House was at pains to say Obama didn’t snub the Dalai Lama in October when the Tibetan religious leader was in Washington – but it sure looked like he did. Obama’s decision not to meet with him in Washington – even though the White House promised another meeting at a date to be named later – gave ammunition to his critics that Obama was downplaying human rights to appease the Chinese.


Beating up on FOX News

Obama ran as a post-partisan candidate who rejected the old ways of Washington. But attacking the conservative network is just the sort of base building, red vs. blue move Obama seemed to denounce during the campaign. Even some Democrats were scratching their heads, saying it seemed beneath Obama to single out one network – a far cry from the inspirational, bridge-building figure the nation thought they were electing.


As I said, rank ‘em and add your own.

By the way the progam on HBO that Obama watched on Tuesday was entitled , “By the People” but there’s a little more to that sentence. Also there are the words, “For the People” but in the White House right now the watchword is “For Obama”. And nothing else matters.

A Tale of Two Cities!

It is a pretty obvious truism that, for a lie to be believed, it must, first of all, be believable.

So consider the City of Bloomington, Texas where the Obama administration claims to have “saved or created” 450 jobs as a result of the “stimulus package”. The only problem with the claim is that this small community received only $26,000. And you can do the math for yourself.

Anyway, with that sum, the city decided on a couple of small tasks one of which was to put a new roof on a public housing project. That created temporary work for five roofers and a supervisor for a total of 450 hours and it was this number that Bloomington reported to the other city, Washington DC. Well that did not fit the desired pattern and someone in the Obama administration “reworked” the numbers into 450 jobs.

Clearly with that sort of fuzzy math it won’t be too hard to come up with Obama’s stated goal of 3 ½ Million jobs saved or created but the problem he and his team face is that the American public is not quite that gullible. (Although, it must be pointed out that many were just one year ago.)

This is one of the reasons why, in New Jersey and Virginia, the “Independent” voters changed from pulling the lever for a Democrat to a Republican by a margin of 2 to 1. In the end, especially in Virginia, it wasn’t even close.

Another reason why it happened is that the American public has not cooled off since the summer-hot wrath of the Tea Parties and Town Hall meetings over healthcare. Now the House bill is published, all 1990 pages of it and people have either read it or they’ve read analysis of it. Here are a few snippets:-

Under the bill, singles making $500,000 a year and couples making $1 million a year will be hit with a further 5.4 percent tax on income.

It purports to set up a mechanism where the commissioner must verify that individuals are citizens or legal immigrants in order to receive affordability credits but the bill does not specify how this will be done.

Members of Congress "may," but are not required to enroll in the public option.

Insurance companies are given immunity from lawsuits where coverage is denied, and then a person suffers injury or death as a result of that denial.

It specifies the creation of 111 new state and federal bureaucracies.

Taxes on small businesses will increase by $729 Billion which is likely to result in the loss of 5 ½ million jobs as those businesses cut their payrolls in order to save money.

What it does not include is any provision for tort reform nor the ability to buy insurance across state lines, both of which would reduce costs immediately.

No wonder that the cities of Bloomington, Texas and Washington DC don’t see eye to eye.

So-called “Blue Dog Democrats” look at the trends shown so clearly in yesterday’s election, they know the passion of their constituents, and they ponder their own test just one year from now. And, they don’t like what they see and, for once, they’re right.

Lite or Light?

Has there ever been a bigger fraud in the Oval Office than Barack Hussein Obama?

Or, has there ever been a more manipulative politician?

It really is hard to tell but there is a third possibility.

The man is evil. That is not a word I use lightly but more and more it comes into my mind. If I were Christian, I think I’d be wearing garlic instead of eating it. But all I can do is to work for the downfall of his administration and that of his party starting in 2010. And I am.

Earlier this week, presumably after another Kobe beef party or a midnight basketball game with his buds, one of the attendees must have reminded him that he was the Commander-in Chief. As he wiped the sweat from his brow, he remembered a couple of things.

First was the towel he had just used could be an item in the auction to build the Obama Memorial. Assuming that all the Mount Rushmore real estate was taken, or there wasn’t enough rock to handle the ears, then the next best thing would have to be a statue of the Great Leader seemingly walking on the water of the Reflecting Pool. I’m sure that Disney or George Lucas could handle it.

Secondly, and a long way secondly, he remembered that there were eighteen caskets due to arrive at the Air Base in Dover, Delaware and he was awake anyway and Michelle was away and the kids were asleep guarded by the Secret Service with nannies just waiting for the first whimper from a first daughter. So why not?

Now sometimes, Obama can make decisions very quickly but only when it’s about him. As a result and as quick as a flash, he woke his Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs and told him of the plan. Duly the White House corps was summoned to attend a photo op to end ‘em all.

The plan was that Obama would be at Dover Air Force Base to help bring home fallen heroes. Even the weather cooperated as the rain fell on the jacket shoulders of the Great Leader under the lights. The C-17 pulled up to the hangar and it all looked good. Then came the bad news!

Only 1 family out of 18 wanted anything to do with Obama. So guess which family was interviewed and photographed?

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.