America's Right

Preying Upon the Disabled

2009-11-21T01:09:00.005-05:00

Senate health bill increases the tax burden on already burdened special needs kids and families

My wife is a nurse. While she used to do the hospital thing, caring for six or seven post-operative patients every shift, Joanna now works with special needs children, many of them with medical problems simply unfathomable to any who haven't interacted with them, or their families.

Much of her time at work is spent caring for these children at their school. Because many are so low-functioning, the stories I hear aren't as much about interaction with the children as they are about interaction with the other nurses, aides and educators. For the most part, they're all very nice but have an undying affinity for Barack Obama and his administration -- it's a wonder Joanna's tongue doesn't hurt from having to bite it so much.

While there's apparently an unwritten rule prohibiting talk of politics in the classroom, much of the conversation recently has naturally revolved around health care reform. I'll be curious to hear what Joanna's co-workers think of this, from Americans for Tax Reform:

There are 18 separate tax hikes in the Reid-Obama healthcare bill. One of them caps the amount that can be deferred in Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) at $2500 per year (a similar provision was included in the Pelosi-Obama health bill and written about by Congressman Cathy McMorris-Rogers, R-Was., for National Review Online) . . . There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly-cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year.

And, from the aforementioned National Review piece from Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rogers:

The Baucus bill would also raise the threshold for deductible medical expenses from 7.5 percent to 10 percent of gross income. That, too, would negatively impact families caring for disabled individuals: for a family with allowable medical expenses of more than $6,600 (which is very likely for most parents of children with special needs), raising the threshold from which they can deduct medical expenses from their gross income will cost $539 in income and payroll taxes right off the bat. Combined with the FSA limit, then, this family would face $1,355 in new taxes by 2013.

If that wasn’t enough, parents of children with special needs are also more likely to rely on a “high-premium health plan” (a plan that provides more coverage and therefore costs more than a standard plan). The Baucus proposal imposes yet another large tax on such “high-cost” plans. Depending on their coverage, families who have such a plan can expect a punitive tax of 40 percent. Also, as a result of cost inflation in health care, the tax will hit everyone eventually. In fact, most health plans providing good coverage today would be subject to the new tax sometime in the next few years.

Should Congress really be trying to finance health care reform on the backs of families who are already carrying a substantial financial burden? Isn’t it ironic that a mandate to make health care more affordable for the most vulnerable Americans has morphed into a tax hike on those with disabilities and their families?

Instead of making it harder for families with high medical expenses to deduct those costs, we should be making it easier. Rather than making tax-protected FSAs essentially worthless, we should be encouraging their use, albeit with more efficiency.

While health reform is a worthy goal, we shouldn’t pay for it by taxing those who already have high medical costs because they or someone in their family has a disability. That would defeat the very purpose of such reform. And we can’t allow it to happen.

Golly, aren't Democrats the ones always clamoring for more and more expensive and redundant accessibility features for the disabled? Isn't the Democratic Party supposed to be the party of compassion? Aren't they the ones who are supposedly the "Party of the Little Guy?"

Instead, not only does the liberal plan for health care reform overtly restrict freedom by capping Flexible Spending Accounts, it does so at the expense of some of the most vulnerable among us. Not to mention the educators, aides and nurses whose jobs depend upon special needs students being able to attend school.

Just the other day, I was saying how much I'd like to drop in on lunch and the lunchtime discussion at Joanna's school. If there's anything that gets me going, it's people who make nonsensical arguments based on emotion and a complete dearth of fact and reality. Whether I bring it to their attention or someone else does, I'm curious to hear whether the reality of the health care reform legislation has an effect on the unwavering support for the president.

If Only Less Environmentalists Were Vegetarians...

2009-11-20T14:42:00.000-05:00

Assigned Reading: Catalina Bison on Birth Control
(FROM: The Los Angeles Times)

Here's the concept of the article in a few sentences:

Back in 1924, a total of fourteen bison were shipped to Catalina Island--off the southern California coast--to be used in a silent Western movie. Now, due to ... well, you get the idea ... the fourteen original bison now have led to a herd of roughly 200 roaming the island. According to the Los Angeles Times, environmentalists are now experimenting with bison birth control in order to keep the herd down to about 150 head or less, thus purportedly decreasing the environmental impact of the bison.

I don't get it. The perceived problem, if you believe in the whole global warming thing, is too many bison, right? Right?

Why pump the bison full of contraceptives? My solution is much better. Less perceived environmental impact, more tasty burgers. Everybody wins. (Except for the bison.)

Media Bias? You Betcha.

2009-11-20T13:42:00.003-05:00

Assigned Reading: 'Accountability Journalism'
(FROM: The Wall Street Journal)

This is actually an excerpt from James Taranto's much larger "Best of the Web" daily installment over at the Wall Street Journal. Apparently, Rush Limbaugh mentioned this on air, as I received about three dozen e-mails within a ten-minute span, all pointing me to these few paragraphs.

Regardless of where it came from, it certainly is worth note here.

An Associated Press dispatch, written by Erica Werner and Richard Alonso-Zaldivar, compares the House and Senate ObamaCare bills. We'd like to compare this dispatch to the AP's dispatch earlier this week "fact checking" Sarah Palin's new book. Here goes:

Number of AP reporters assigned to story:
• ObamaCare bills: 2
• Palin book: 11

Number of pages in document being covered:
• ObamaCare bills: 4,064
• Palin book: 432

Number of pages per AP reporter:
• ObamaCare bill: 2,032
• Palin book: 39.3

On a per-page basis, that is, the AP devoted 52 times as much manpower to the memoir of a former Republican officeholder as to a piece of legislation that will cost trillions of dollars and an untold number of lives. That's what they call accountability journalism.

Amazing? Absolutely. Surprising? Absolutely not. Sad? You betcha.

Cost-Cutting Begins

2009-11-20T11:13:00.001-05:00

By Nathaniel Givens
America's Right

Until this week I had never heard of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, but the government group made headlines when it released updated guidelines recommending that women in their 40s should not get mammograms.

Right off the bat the recommendations didn't make a lot of sense to me. What's the harm in doing the tests? According to the task force there is a concern that false positives could lead to women being scared while they wait for the test results. Or that women who don't get mammograms and then get cancer will feel guilty. Really? Guilt and trepidation are reasons to not screen yourself for a deadly disease?

But the real story came when Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius weighed into the controversy:

My message to women is simple. Mammograms have always been an important life-saving tool in the fight against breast cancer, and they still are today... There are other groups who have disagreed with this information.

She then added that the task force is "making recommendations, not coverage decisions, not payment decisions." This is true. For now.

If you don't feel like watching the video, here is the money quote from former NIH director Bernadine Healy:

She [Sebelius] is absolutely wrong in saying this does not determine the kinds of preventative services covered. It absolutely does. Health reform designates this Preventive Services Task Force as the sole source informant for what preventive services will be covered. It doesn't go to the doctor groups, it just uses this government group. And this particular government group was just one of a voice of many... suddenly they have been elevated to be the choice of the government for setting standards. Specificaly in the language in the House bill... only A's and B's will be covered, which means C's won't be. [T]his mammogram report... lowered to C coverage for women in their 40s and over 75 years of age.

Right now we can all safely ignore the recommendations of the Task Force, but if the healthcare reform bill becomes law so will these suggestions.

You might think that this is another example of deliberate deception from the Obama administration. That was my first reaction. I figured that this was a trial balloon to see how strong the backlash to service-cutting would be, but I've changed my mind.

First of all there is the simple fact that this Task Force predates the Obama administration and many of the appointees are Bush appointees. So it's more likely - but not any more comforting - that this is merely an unintended and unforeseen consequence of the Obama administration's approach to healthcare reform.

And that's really the hallmark problem with Democratic fiscal policy, isn't it? Lack of foresight.

The healthcare reform effort is supposed to achieve two goals at the same time: cut costs and cover more people. And the more you can cut costs, the more people you can cover with the same amount of money. So far so good.

The problem is that the strategy they have taken is to create a command economy where the government sets prices rather than the market. We have about a century's worth of history in modern command economies and the evidence is clear: they don't work. You can force people to set lower prices for a good or service, but the only result is that there is even less of that good or service to go around.

Americans want to cover more people, but you can't cover more people with fewer services.

A secondary myth this should explode is the myth that preventive services are some kind of economic silver bullet. No matter how much Obama may try to demonize the insurance industry and doctors as money-grubbing fiends who would rather skip a test now so that they can charge for a surgery later, the fact is that more often then not the preventive services cost more than they save. Not only do you have to pay for the tests themselves, but often the result of finding a disease earlier is more cost, not less. Because if you don't catch cancer until it's about to kill you there's not a lot of time to fight it and there's not a lot that can be done. If you catch it earlier you will live longer and use more resources. So this kinds of screenings raise costs, they don't lower them.

As Healy put it:

This group focuses on public health and economics and modeling and health policy. This is very different from groups... who sit down and look specifically at what's right for the patient.

That's exactly what is going to result from the healthcare reform. Government bureaucrats are going to determine what tests and treatments you are allowed to get based on balancing their spreadsheets. This is why the Task Force didn't include a single oncologist, and their recommendation has been criticized by the American Cancer Society. In a few months or years - if the reform passes - those criticisms won't matter.

Healy also said:

In the area of cancer we lead the world and that includes breast cancer and prostate cancer, and it is in large part because we do vigorous and aggressive screening which other countries don't do.

So this reform is going to take those areas where the United States is definitively leading the world and cripple them. Yay for fairness, right?

I don't believe Sebelius or Obama had anything to do with the report this Task Force just offered, but I most certainly believe that they are having an influence now. And the orders they are giving are simple: "shut up".

There will be plenty of time to ration healthcare later, after the healthcare bill votes. We wouldn't want the concerns of the American people to weigh on their representatives minds during such an important vote now, would we?

---------------
Nathaniel Givens is classical liberal studying economics in graduate school. He and his wife work as business analysis consultants, and they live as undercover conservatives with their two small children in a socialist bastion of a college town. Nathaniel maintains a public Facebook Page, and he has been writing for America's Right since December 2008.

Hatch on Health Care Reform in the Senate

2009-11-20T10:48:00.002-05:00

Orrin Hatch on the Senate health care reform bill.

This Just In: Rain is Wet!

2009-11-20T08:09:00.000-05:00

By Monica Snyder
America's Right

According to The Washington Times, U.S. health plans have history of cost overruns. This, apparently, is news.

Similarly: Obama: Too much debt could fuel double-dip recession. I don't get it. Is he warning himself? Warning Congress, whose enormously expensive initiatives he staunchly encourages? I feel these things are so painfully obvious that it slightly depresses me that they are newsworthy items. I post them for the remaining 50 percent of Americans who still approve of Obama's job performance in office.

From the first link:

In 1965, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance program of Medicare - the federal health care program for the elderly and disabled - would cost $9 billion by 1990. The actual cost that year was $67 billion.

In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee said the entire Medicare program would cost $12 billion in 1990. The actual cost in 1990 was $98 billion.

In 1987, Congress projected that Medicaid - the joint federal-state health care program for the poor - would make special relief payments to hospitals of less than $1 billion in 1992. Actual cost: $17 billion.

It'll be different this time, though. We just have to have Hope.

And, on a sub-rant: for those of you who object to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars on the basis of our ever-expanding debt but who simultaneously support the recent health care initiatives, allow me to slap you upside the head with this:

Medicaid and Medicare cost America more than $650 billion each year. All of defense combined, much less the wars alone, costs around $560 billion per year. Do you understand? Medicare and Medicaid currently costs about $100 billion more per year than total money spent for all branches of the military including equipment, operations, maintenance, personnel and the wars.

And that's not even getting into the disaster that is Social Security.

How anyone can both deride the debt and simultaneously be in favor of an increased government role in health care is baffling. If it were only ignorant idealists spouting this absurdity it might be more tolerable, but those idealists vote, and so now we have our elected officials defending their wasteful, inefficient monstrosities with comparisons like this:

A triumphant Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared the legislation to the passage of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare 30 years later.

She's exactly right.

---------------
Monica Snyder is a conservative undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley. No, seriously. Berkeley. She has been writing for America's Right since November 2009.

Underestimating Underestimation

2009-11-19T18:55:00.005-05:00

The artificial threshold for the total cost of health care reform set by President Obama was $900 billion. As if that amount is somehow chump change.

When Nancy Pelosi released H.R. 3962, her 1,990-page monstrosity, the official cost estimate from the Democrats was $894 billion. (After, of course, a $200+ billion provision was separated from the bill.) The Congressional Budget Office scored it at $1.055 trillion. And then the New York Post reexamined the CBO's numbers and analysis, and maintained that the total cost was actually $1.8 trillion.

Now, with regard to the Senate bill--which, as just announced, will receive its first vote at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday--which carried an advertised price of $849 billion, the Post is once again scrutinizing the numbers, and once again has determined that the health care reform legislation will cost roughly twice as much as advertised.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is touting the Senate’s newest health-care bill as costing $849 billion over 10 years. But this uses the same accounting trick as past versions: 99 percent of the costs don’t kick in until the fifth year of that “10 year” period. And the true 10-year costs are well over twice what Reid's advertising: $1.8 billion.

The Democrats cite the bills’ projected costs from 2010-19. Yet, as the Congressional Budget Office reports, the bill would cost just $9 billion total from 2010 through 2013 — versus $147 billion in 2016 alone. In the first 40 percent of what the Democrats are calling the bill’s “first 10 years,” only 1 percent of its costs would yet have hit.

As the CBO analysis indicates, the bill’s real 10-year costs would start in 2014. And in its true first decade (2014 to 2023), CBO projects the bill’s costs to be $1.8 trillion — double the price Reid is advertising.

And that’s even though the CBO optimistically assumes the government-run “public option” wouldn’t cost a cent.

What Happened to Global Warming?

2009-11-19T18:38:00.003-05:00

Assigned Reading: Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out
(FROM: Der Spiegel)

The lead-in pretty much says it all:

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

The bold formatting is original, by the way. I didn't add that. The article continues:

...The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

I did add the italics there. I couldn't resist.

Here's the takeaway: All of the climate change science is based on computer models for the climate. None of the models predicted this 10-year hiatus. So, none of the models are reliable. Heck, none of the climate models used by the global warming alarmists are even good enough to predict known values in the past -- so, so much for their climate models.

Which means it's time for scientists to admit the truth: they don't actually understand the climate. They have no idea what is going to happen.

As we've discussed previously, however, the global warming movement is more religion than science, so don't expect lack of evidence to slow the political activism. If anything, expect the hysteria to kick up a notch as the true believers try to drown out the increasing murmurs of doubt from everyday Americans.

Fair and Balanced? Yes.

2009-11-19T16:47:00.002-05:00

Assigned Reading: Fox News: Fair and Balanced?
(FROM: Forbes)

What if I told you that Fox gave Obama his worst press and John McCain his best press of any network during last year's presidential election? If you work for the White House, you'd probably take this as proof that Fox is just a mouthpiece for the opposition. Now what if I told you that Fox had the most balanced coverage of any network during the same campaign? If you work for Fox, you'd probably say we told you so.

But what if I told you that both scenarios are true?

While it seems unlikely, that conclusion is precisely the case...

Read on for the rest of S. Robert Lichter's analysis of the facts around the Fox News controversy.

Congratulations, It's a Behemoth!

2009-11-19T13:27:00.005-05:00

Senate health bill beats House counterpart in size, scope and reach, introduces bevy of new and increased taxes to the American people

Well, well, well -- here we go again.

At 2,074 pages, Harry Reid's Senate Health Care Reform bill has started even larger than Nancy Pelosi's counterpart in the House of Representatives which, as delivered, topped out at a scant-by-comparison 1,990 pages.

Also, while the House bill used the word "shall"--the governmental equivalent of a doctor telling a patient to turn their head and cough--a whopping 3,425 times, the just-released Senate version used the same word 3,607 times. And, while the words "tax" and "taxable" were used 87 and 62 times, respectively, in Pelosi's nightmare, the same words were used 183 and 164 times in Reid's version.

Silly me -- I didn't realize this was a race.

Like it's counterpart in the House of Representatives, H.R. 3590 is the evisceration of the American health care system, destruction of the American economy, and erosion of American freedom, all rolled into one giant package. Increased taxes on individuals and small businesses will only serve to further encumber American families, increase unemployment, and stifle economic growth.

And, as if on cue, from Americans For Tax Reform we have a list of tax hikes proposed in the Reid bill. While I doubt it is complete, it is certainly a start:

Individual Mandate Tax (Page 324/Sec. 1501/$8 bil): Starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance must pay an income surtax . . . capped at 8 percent of income. Exemptions for religious objectors, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, those earning less than the poverty line, members of Indian tribes, and hardship cases (determined by HHS).
Employer Mandate Tax (Page 348/Sec. 1513/$28 bil): If an employer does not offer health coverage, and at least one employee qualifies for a health tax credit, the employer must pay an additional non-deductible tax of $750 for all full-time employees. Applies to all employers with 50 or more employees. If the employer requires a waiting period to enroll in coverage of 30-60 days, there is a $400 tax per employee ($600 if the period is 60 days or longer).
Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans (Page 1979/Sec. 9001/$149.1 bil): Starting in 2013, new 40 percent excise tax on “Cadillac” health insurance plans ($8500 single/$23,000 family). Higher threshold ($9850 single/$26,000 family) for early retirees and high-risk professions. CPI +1 percentage point indexed. From 2013-2015, the 17 highest-cost states are 120% of this level.
Employer Reporting of Insurance on W-2 (Page 1996/Sec. 9002/Min$): Preamble to taxing health benefits on individual tax returns.
Medicine Cabinet Tax (Page 1997/Sec. 9003/$5 bil): No longer allowable to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin)
HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike (Page 1998/Sec. 9004/$1.3 bil): Increases additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.
FSA Cap (Page 1999/Sec. 9005/$14.6 bil): Imposes cap on FSAs of $2500 (now unlimited).
Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting (Page 1999/Sec. 9006/$17.1 bil): Requires businesses to send 1099-MISC information tax forms to corporations (currently limited to individuals), a huge compliance burden for small employers.
Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals (page 2001/Sec. 9007/Min$): $50,000 per hospital if they fail to meet new "community health assessment needs," "financial assistance," and "billing and collection" rules set by HHS.
Tax on Innovator Drug Companies (Page 2010/Sec. 9008/ $22.2 bil): $2.3 billion annual tax on the industry imposed relative to share of sales made that year.
Tax of Medical Device Manufacturers (Page 2020/Sec. 9009/$19.3 bil): $2 billion annual tax on the industry imposed relative to shares of sales made that year. Exempts items retailing for <$100.
Tax on Health Insurers (Page 2026/Sec. 9010/$60.4 bil): $6.7 billion annual tax on the industry imposed relative to health insurance premiums collected that year.
Eliminate tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D (Page 2034/Sec. 9012/$5.4 bil)
Raise "Haircut" for Medical Itemized Deduction from 7.5% to 10% of AGI (Page 2034/Sec. 9013/$15.2 bil) : Waived for 65+ taxpayers in 2013-2016 only
$500,000 Annual Executive Compensation Limit for Health Insurance Executives (Page 2035/Sec. 9014/$0.6 bil)
Hike in Medicare Payroll Tax (Page 2040/Sec. 9015/$53.8 bil)
Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike (Page 2044/Sec. 9016/$0.4 bil): The special tax deduction in current law for Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies would only be allowed if 85 percent or more of premium revenues are spent on clinical services.
Tax on Cosmetic Medical Procedures (Page 2045/Sec. 9017/$5.8 bil): New 5% excise tax on elective cosmetic surgery to be paid by the surgery patient.

Crucial Senate Vote on Health Care This Weekend?

2009-11-19T11:37:00.003-05:00

While I have yet to work my way through the 2,074-page, $849 billion health care reform legislation released today by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, something I saw on South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint's Twitter page stuck out and made my hair stand on end:

Jim DeMint Harry Reid may force critical vote on his 2074 pg health care takeover bill this weekend

Folks, I'm going to rip through this thing the best I can, but in the meantime, you need to get on the horn with your senators--in their Capitol Hill and home state offices--and explain to them that a vote to push this bill any further toward passage is a vote in favor of a government takeover of one-sixth of our economy.

I like Sen. Tom Coburn's idea -- let's take almost two full days and read the darned thing, cover to cover, on the Senate floor. Whatever it takes, folks. Whatever it takes.

All throughout the weekend, as I traveled around the Lowcountry in DeMint's state, people seemed to believe that this bill would die in the Senate. I'm not so certain. I'm not so certain that Harry Reid, knowing that his Senate is the only roadblock left and knowing that his future in Washington is up-in-the-air at best, will not use reconciliation to pass the bill with a simple majority.

This is a nightmare waiting to happen. Check back here as the day progresses for information with regard to the contents of the Senate bill. As I build new material, I'll include it both at the top of the page and in the Health Care Index, linked in the top-right corner at America's Right.

Justifiable Anger

2009-11-19T00:19:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was my first day back at work following an extended weekend spent house-hunting in the Charleston, SC area. While I spent little time over the past five days or so in front of a television or computer, it was difficult to escape the news of Attorney Gen. Eric Holder's decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammad to New York City for criminal trial in federal court. In fact, it was one of the few things I actually had the chance to write about here at America's Right while I was out of town.

The practical reality of Holder's decision didn't quite hit me completely, however, until yesterday afternoon when in the course of my daily schedule as a legal writer I found myself thinking of KSM and the other 9/11 co-conspirators as I walked into the federal courthouse here in Philadelphia.

Of course, my own outrage at the Justice Department's decision--which Holder testified today was made independently of the president (anyone believe him?)--has hovered around the security threat brought upon New York City, the disconnect between Holder and those devastated by the 9/11 attacks, and the overall indication that this administration is ignorant with regard to the threat from radical Islam and seems to have trouble discerning good from evil in general, but walking into the courthouse yesterday afternoon brought things down to a personal level.

What if it were the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and not the Southern District of New York in which the Justice Department deemed it appropriate to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his murderous cohorts? What if it were my building? Would I really want to go to work each day in the global epicenter of the international conflict formerly known as the Global War on Terror?

On Tuesday, Arizona Congressman John Shadegg felt it necessary to apologize for comments he made Monday night while addressing, on the House floor, security concerns in the Big Apple as a result of such a trial in Manhattan.

"Well, mayor," Shadegg said, addressing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg rhetorically, "how are you going to feel when it is your daughter that is kidnapped at school by a terrorist?"

As a father of a young daughter, my goodness -- Shadegg's statement hits right square in the gut. Thinking about my daughter's life in jeopardy makes my stomach turn, causes my blood pressure to perceptibly rise, and brings tears to my eyes. It's a horrible thing to endure the loss of a child, and terrible to even consider it, especially when put into the context of something as senseless as a terrorist attack. Yet I don't believe that Shadegg should have apologized, and I absolutely applaud him for standing fast when it came to reminding us of the threat that is radical Islam in the course of doing so.

The fact is, my gut wrenches when I think of what happened at Comintern Street School Number One on September 1, 2004 when nearly 800 children were taken hostage by Muslim terrorists. One hundred and eighty-six children were murdered that day in what has come to be known as the Beslan school massacre.

Think about that for a moment. Think about that, and then consider that the New York City Department of Education comprises the largest system of schools in the United States of America so hated by radical Muslims the world over. Think about the more than one million children attending public school in the New York City area that will be unnecessarily put at risk by an unfathomable and unforgivable decision based completely on politics and an ideological bent completely incapable of drawing the line between right and wrong and good and evil.

Was John Shadegg so wrong to try, desperately and for the sake of those 1.1 million schoolchildren in the more than 1,600 area schools, to get through the thick skull of Michael Bloomberg? Was he really? I don't think so. Not at all.

Furthermore, I cannot help but wonder out loud whether Bloomberg would have offered the same support for the Justice Department decision should it have come prior to his re-election at the beginning of this month. My guess is that Bloomberg would have employed common sense and done what so many New York City area first responders are doing -- protest Holder's disgustingly expansive disconnect with reality.

On that front, it should be noted that Attorney Gen. Eric Holder's law firm, Covington & Burling, volunteered its services to at least 18 terrorist detainees, sworn enemies of America, in connection with lawsuits brought against the American government and American people. During 2007 alone, Covington & Burling contributed more than three-thousand hours of free, top-flight legal assistance to radical Islamic jihadists captured in the act of plotting or carrying out attacks against Americans. As one conservative law school acquaintance of mine says: "Meet your Attorney General, America."

Now, in an effort surely intended to engender warm feelings from our enemies across the globe, and in an attempt to show that this post-George W. Bush America has embarked on a new path toward human rights for all, and constitutional rights for everyone, the Obama Justice Department is risking the chance that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his cohorts will be acquitted on a procedural or evidentiary technicality, and that KSM's supports in the caves and spiderholes back home will glean invaluable information about American intelligence operations and other measures from materials made available for trial.

Sure, President Obama and Attorney General Holder insist that neither will happen, but their track record for honesty is about as thin as Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's tendency for compassion. The fact is, information leaked during previous such trials following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing led to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Furthermore, the stronger and more vigorously Obama and Holder maintain that KSM, et al. will be tried, found guilty and executed, the more the enemies this administration holds in such high esteem will characterize this trial as a complete sham. And in that, they will be right. On oh-so-many levels.

Congressman Shadegg was absolutely right to be outraged. After all, it was he and other House Republicans who authored the Democrat-spurned Keep Terrorists Out of America Act, which would ensure that Guantanamo Bay detainees would remain off American soil and out of the American court system. And, the fact remains that the facility in Cuba was designed for this specific purpose, and since 2002 has held in more than acceptable conditions some of the world’s most dangerous radical Islamic jihadists, including but certainly not limited to those who assisted in planning and facilitating the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was President Obama who, in January, signed an executive order to close the detention facility without his promised plan for dealing with the detainees, and it is President Obama from whom, ten months later, the American people are still waiting to hear a plan.

It has been in the face of clear, unambiguous opposition from the American people that the president continues his push to transfer jihadists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammad to U.S. soil, and now his administration is working overtime to ignore the will of the people and pave the way for those terrorists to have access to our American legal system, where they will look to and possibly succeed in manipulating, for their own use, the rights provided by the very Constitution which protects and preserves the rights of those people they would murder in a minute if given the chance.

According to reports from the Washington Post and other outlets, one out of every seven Guantanamo Bay detainees deemed “safe” and released from custody by this administration and the previous one have returned to the battlefield. Some have taken American lives once again.

When President Obama took his Oath of Office, he swore to protect and defend the United States Constitution. How does this accomplish that goal? How does this make America any more safe? How does this make New York City any less of a target? How does this project strength from America as we fight against radical Islam?

In short, it doesn't. Congressman Shadegg understands this, while Mayor Bloomberg does not. The thing is, I get the feeling that Eric Holder and Barack Obama understand it as well -- they just don't care.

AP Goes after Palin

2009-11-18T12:32:00.004-05:00

Assigned Reading: AP Devotes 11 Reporters to Palin Book 'Fact Check'
(FROM: Fox News)

The Associated Press managed to snag a pre-release copy of Palin's new book "Going Rogue" and immediately assigned 11 full-time reporters to "fact check" the book. The result?

The AP claims Palin misstated her record with regard to travel expenses and taxpayer-funded bailouts, using statements widely reported elsewhere. But it also speculated into Palin's motives for writing "Going Rogue: An American Life," stating as fact that the book "has all the characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto."

So they rehashed some old attacks and then speculated about her motives. Takeaway? They couldn't find anything to criticize.

Palin is a big girl, and she can take care of herself. She hit back from her Facebook page:

Imagine that. 11 AP reporters dedicating time and resources to tearing up the book, instead of using the time and resources to 'fact check' what's going on with Sheik Mohammed's trial, Pelosi's health care takeover costs, Hasan's associations, etc. Amazing.

The AP refused to comment.

Of course the story would not be complete without pointing out that compared to the 11 journalists who were unleashed on Palin's book, the AP sent a grand total of ZERO bloodhounds to investigate either of Obama's books. Or autobiographies by Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden or either of the Clintons. Given that record, I would refuse to comment as well.

My copy of "Going Rogue" should be waiting for me when I get home from school this evening. I'll read it as quickly as time permits, and review the book here at America's Right.

Persian Courage

2009-11-17T22:00:00.005-05:00

Assigned Reading: Sharif University Student to Khamenei: Why Can’t Anyone Criticize You?
(FROM: Persian2English)

What many Americans don't understand about the Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979 is that - in the beginning - it wasn't purely Islamic. The Iranians who opposed the Shah's despotic regime came from the left, right, and center of the political spectrum:

Other opposition groups included constitutionalist liberals — the democratic, reformist Islamic Freedom Movement of Iran, headed by Mehdi Bazargan, and the more secular National Front. They were based in the urban middle class, and wanted the Shah to adhere to the Iranian Constitution of 1906 rather than to replace him with a theocracy, but lacked the cohesion and organization of Khomeini's forces.

Marxists groups — primarily the communist Tudeh Party of Iran and the Fedaian guerillas — had been weakened considerably by government repression. Despite this the guerillas did help play an important part in the final February 1979 overthrow delivering "the regime its coup de grace." The most powerful guerilla group — the People's Mujahedin — was leftist Islamist and opposed the influence of the clergy as reactionary.

Many clergy did not follow Khomeini's lead. Popular ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani supported the left, while perhaps the most senior and influential ayatollah in Iran — Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari — first remained aloof from politics and then came out in support of a democratic revolution.

In this respect our own President and the original Supreme Leader of Iran have a lot in common: they each pulled off a successful con of their respective nations. The Persian people voted for hope and change in 1979, but the change they got wasn't what most of them had in mind. Sort of like what we're going through in the United States these days, although so far to a much lesser degree.

And - as the widespread street protests after the most recent election showed the world - the Iranian people are getting tired of it. The one-time revolutionaries of the 1970s have become the counter-revolutionaries of the new millenia, and a new generation of Iranian youth are rising up to challenge their autocratic overlords.

Consider Mahmoud Vahidnia - a Shariff University student and winner of the International Math Olympics. When the current Supreme Leader (Khamenei, not Khomeini) came to hold a conference with students it was supposed to be like an Obama town hall: only pre-selected friendlies allowed. But when Mahmoud got his chance at the microphone his questions were not friendly. Here is a partial translation of his comments:

Why can’t anyone criticize you in this country, isn’t that ignorant? Do you think that you make no mistakes? Why have they made an idol out of you that is so unreachable and that nobody can challenge? I have never read an article about your performance in any newspaper because you have shut down all the media that is against you in the country. Why does national TV show all the events untruthfully? For example all the events after the election. Why do you support them [national TV shows], when everyone knows they are lying? Since the president of national TV is directly selected by you, then you are responsible for all this.

That is what I call courage, and my prayers go out for Mahmoud tonight. According to Persian2English's blog post, the rumor is that he has already been arrested.

Apology Tour in Vain

2009-11-17T13:13:00.002-05:00

By Nathaniel Givens
America's Right

It looks as though all that globetrotting bowing and apologizing has been for naught. I guess Obama figured that if only he apologized for Bush enough people would love us again. Or, let's be honest, that they would love him. It never occurred to the man who could do no wrong in the eyes of an adoring media that people might actually find reason to dislike him for who he is and not just for who he replaced.

And yet that is precisely the rude awakening that we're seeing right now. Consider this opinion piece for Der Spiegel in which by Christian Schwägerl takes Obama to task with nothing like the velvet glove treatment he expects from everyone except Fox News. Schwägerl doesn't mince words. He states flatly (and in bold, no less!):

Obama Lied to the Europeans

Schwägerl elaborates:

Barack Obama cast himself as a "citizen of the world" when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. But the US president has now betrayed this claim. In his Berlin speech, he was dishonest with Europe. Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely his country's addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. Health care reform and other domestic issues were more important to him than global environmental threats.

Of course I don't actually agree with Schwägerl's criticisms. I'm skeptical that there is any feasible way to limit carbon emissions, skeptical of the link between man-originated carbon emissions and global warming, and skeptical of global warming itself as an ongoing phenomena. It certainly hasn't been around much over the last decade. So I take issue with the entire premise that it is the job of the United States to take one for the team, fall on our swords, jump on the grenade (pick your favorite euphemism) and fix this alleged global crisis by committing economic suicide and hoping our "allies" will follow us off the cliff. Keep in mind that most of our closest allies can't even be bothered to send significant troop levels to Afghanistan - the one war everyone is supposed to be in support of. And as for China, India and Russia slitting their wrists just to be team players.... yeah, right.

Meanwhile I disagree with Obama's domestic policies, but I agree that American problems should be the American president's top priority. Imagine that! For better or for much, much worse we elected Barack Obama as President of the United States of America. Not President of the Concerned Environmentalists of Western Europe. (Believe me, we'd give him to you if we could, but for the time being we're stuck with him.)

But none of these things speak to the two points that stand out from this article.

Point 1 - You can't blame this on Bush.

Life on the campaign was so much easier for Obama. Whenever things get really bad he tries to go back to what worked way back in 2008. And above all that means dragging out the straw man of George W. Bush to beat up on again. Unfortunately that won't work now that Obama has plenty of screw-ups of his own, and Schwägerl makes it clear that Obama owns the impending climate change delay:

The folder labeled "climate change" that George W. Bush left behind for his successor on the desk of the Oval Office in January likely wasn't a thick one. Although Bush once said that America is overly-dependent on oil, he never got beyond that insight. He was too busy waging war on Iraq and searching for a legal basis for extraordinary renditions to pay much attention to the real threat facing humanity. "Forget the climate" seems to have been Bush's unofficial motto.

But few people expected that the Barack Obama, of all people, would continue his predecessor's climate change plan.

Got that? They hate Bush and you. It's not an either-or proposition. So blaming Bush isn't going to deflect these criticisms.

Point 2 - You can never concede enough.

If you've ever done any haggling in your life you know more about negotiations than President Obama ever will. In my life I've learned the same basic lessons apply whether I'm picking out a custom engagement ring in my hometown, bartering for crafts Eastern European marketplaces, or bickering with vendors, customers and business partners in my own businesses. These are the kinds of things that a sheltered adult life in academia may prevent you from learning.

And that's why Obama doesn't understand that running around and apologizing doesn't work. All it does is broadcast to everyone else that here is a target ripe for the plucking. If you show weakness in a negotiation the price you pay doesn't go down. It goes up.

That's what we see happening here. Obama thought if only he bowed deeply enough and apologized profusely enough that people would forgive and forget the old grievances. But most complaints about US behavior have never been sincere. They've been posturing to try and extort more aid money, more concessions, more support, more whatever from the US. So when you concede to those demands you may think you're addressing historical mistakes, but what you're actually doing is acquiescing to the demands of the guy your haggling with. And how are they going to respond?

They are going to press for an even better deal.

This is what we get from a man whose only real-world experiences come from within the sheltered confines of either from the Ivory Tower or the Daley Machine. A man who thinks sitting down for a chit-chat with Kim Jung Il or Ahmadinejad without preconditions is a man who has no idea what the rules of the game are. He doesn't even know that a game is being played.

He's learning the hard way that the more concede the more people want, and so there is no such thing as conceding enough.

I knew Obama would need on-the-job training, but even I'm shocked that this far into his presidency he is still making such rookie mistakes. He truly is the worst of both worlds. He is perfectly acclimatized to the kinds of favor-trading, elbow-twisting hardball domestic politics that make his radical domestic agenda a serious threat, but on the international scene - when a little bit of level-headed hardball would go a long way to protecting our interests - we suddenly find ourselves depending on a man whose chief talent appears to be finding and identifying royalty and then bowing to them.

---------------
Nathaniel Givens is classical liberal studying economics in graduate school. He and his wife work as business analysis consultants, and they live as undercover conservatives with their two small children in a socialist bastion of a college town. Nathaniel maintains a public Facebook Page, and he has been writing for America's Right since December 2008.

Hoffman Unconcedes

2009-11-17T09:00:00.001-05:00

Assigned Reading: Hoffman 'unconcedes' in N.Y.-23 House race
(FROM: The Hill)

As some of our readers have already pointed out, independent conservative Doug Hofman has "unconceded" (I don't think that's a technical term) in the NY-23 race.

Hoffman appeared on conservative commenatator Glenn Beck's radio show this afternoon. Beck asked the him if he would "unconcede."

"Yes, if I knew this information at the election night, I would not have conceded," Hoffman said. Beck asked him again if he was "unconceding" and Hoffman replied, "If that’s possible, yes."

There are over 10,000 absentee ballots to be counted, and it's possible that Hoffman could end up winning the race, but to do that 65% of those ballots would have to go to him. That's unlikely, especially since Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava pulled out late in the race after many of the absentee ballots may have been cast.

Of course I'm hoping for a Hoffman come-from-behind upset, but no matter what happens the stage is being set for a showdown in 2010. Bill Owen's lead has already been cut from 5,000 votes to 3,000 votes and will probably shrink farther. If this is how well an unabashed conservative can do in a liberal/moderate race in New York, the GOP should take note for races across the nation.

If they don't, there might just be a few more conservative independents where Hoffman came from.

'We Don't Learn From Our Mistakes.'

2009-11-16T16:49:00.003-05:00

By Nathaniel Givens
America's Right

In late 2000 Louis Pepe was a guard in the same New York facility where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will likely be housed during his trial. One of the prisoners was an alleged top aide to Osama bin Laden: Mamdouh Mahmud Salim. On November 1st, 2000 Salim and his cell mate attacked Pepe. As reported by Fox News:

The two had been granted permission by a federal judge to purchase hot sauce, says Pepe's sister, which they then stored in a honey jar and used to create a blinding mace. Teaming up against Pepe, they beat and blinded him, covering the floor in his spattered blood. They then tried to rape him as he waited an entire hour for fellow guards to come to his aid, his sister said.

"They wanted to discredit the badge and what he stood for," Eileen Trotta told FoxNews.com. "After they plunged him in the eye with that makeshift knife, they did the sign of the cross on his chest."

As a result of his injuries, Pepe was blinded. He is also paralyzed on the right side of body and still has difficulties speaking.

The message from everyone to Obama's administration to Bloomberg's office to the federal Bureau of Prisons seems to be "don't worry, we won't let that happen again!" Similarly, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said: "That was an extraordinarily brutal attack and I don't believe they've experienced anything like that since then."

Really? Nothing like that since then? That's is supposed to make me feel better?

If terrorists used the same tactics again and again, they wouldn't be very dangerous. I highly doubt that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Plan A is going to involve collecting hot sauce, just as failing to blow up World Trade Tower North in 1993 with a truck bomb didn't lead to a repeat of the same strategy in 2001.

Terrorists are dangerous because they innovate, and the fact that the Bureau of Prisons is talking about the last attack on a guard makes me wonder about their capacity to protect against the next attack on a guard; an attack that will certainly use different tactics.

You could see this as an argument against bringing KSM to New York City for a civilian trial, but I see something bigger. As Pepe's sister put it:

We're such a lax country — we don't learn from our mistakes. We have to protect our own, and at this point we're not doing it.

Rationing and Proper Authority

2009-11-16T11:42:00.001-05:00

This morning, as I was staring at the Atlantic Ocean over the first of two cups of coffee, I stumbled upon a fantastic commentary in The Wall Street Journal on the effects that the Democrats' health care reform will have upon seniors, medical providers (doctors), and ordinary people alike.

While I encourage everyone to read the entire piece and pass it along to family and friends, here are a few excerpts:

Like most of Europe, the various health bills stipulate that Congress will arbitrarily decide how much to spend on health care for seniors every year—and then invest an unelected board with extraordinary powers to dictate what is covered and how it will be paid for. White House budget director Peter Orszag calls this Medicare commission "critical to our fiscal future" and "one of the most potent reforms."

As envisioned by the Senate Finance Committee, the commission—all 15 members appointed by the President—would have to meet certain budget targets each year. Starting in 2015, Medicare could not grow more rapidly on a per capita basis than by a measure of inflation. After 2019, it could only grow at the same rate as GDP, plus one percentage point.

The theory is to let technocrats set Medicare payments free from political pressure, as with the military base closing commissions. But that process presented recommendations to Congress for an up-or-down vote. Here, the commission's decisions would go into effect automatically if Congress couldn't agree within six months on different cuts that met the same target. The board's decisions would not be subject to ordinary notice-and-comment rule-making, or even judicial review.

Yet if the goal really is political insulation, then the Medicare Commission is off to a bad start. To avoid a senior revolt, Finance Chairman Max Baucus decided to bar his creation from reducing benefits or raising the eligibility age, which meant that it could only cut costs by tightening Medicare price controls on doctors and hospitals. Doctors and hospitals, naturally, were furious.

But a decade from now, such limits are off—which also happens to be roughly the time when ObamaCare's spending explodes. The hard budget cap means there is only so much money to be divvied up for care, with no account for demographic changes, such as longer life spans, or for the increasing incidence of diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions.

Worse, it makes little room for medical innovations. The commission is mandated to go after "sources of excess cost growth," meaning treatments that are too expensive or whose coverage will boost spending. If researchers find a pricey treatment for Alzheimer's in 2020, that might be banned because it would add new costs and bust the global budget. Or it might decide that "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller," as President Obama put it in June.

One of the examples given is a program in Washington state which is known for its rationing of care. Acknowledging the state-by-state programs which have succeeded and failed and learning from those lessons would be, in my opinion, the foundation for true reform. We see how Maine's state-operated Dirigo Health System has failed, so we should glean from it the pitfalls of state-run systems. We see how Washington state's system is reminiscent of the systems in Canada and Britain, so we should take from it the danger of rationing for the benefit of a global budget and consider that danger in devising our own reform.

Even such patently unconstitutional specifics as punishable-by-incarceration individual and employer mandates aside, the federal government has no business in any way, shape or form being involved in health care to begin with. The Tenth Amendment states expressly that "[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." In other words, if it does not fall within the 17 enumerated powers found in Article I, Section 8--along with the Tenth Amendment, my favorite provision in the Constitution--then authority vests in the state or the people.

Should the federal government get involved in health care at all, it should be to harness the power of the free market through opening up the private insurance market to interstate competition and allowing small businesses and individuals to pool personnel and resources for added buying power. Anything else, any other reforms, should be within the purview of the states. That way, the power will be closer to the people, and states can learn from one another with regard to what works and what does not.

Dunn Lacks Credibility on Credibility

2009-11-16T10:06:00.006-05:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Sean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck's Protest Footage

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

According to White House Communications Director Anita Dunn in a statement she confirmed was fully supported by the president--she's "not a person who is known for going rogue," she says--the rest of the mainstream press should model itself after Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, and Comedy Central.

Why? Because Stewart was the only outlet to immediately recognize creative editing at Fox News Channel, in which the folks at Hannity used file footage of the September 12 march on Washington to bolster perceived attendance of a recent health care rally. It was a stupid, stupid move. It deserved to be pointed out and ridiculed. And Sean Hannity himself was right to apologize for it, though in my opinion he should have led with the apology, and been a little more sincere.

Credibility, after all, means everything. Even more so for those of us on the political right, who have to be perfect in every way to survive scrutiny or prove improper scrutiny and criticism unfair.

Which brings us to Dunn and Saturday's report from Bloomberg News.

She criticized Fox for using edited footage of a rally to make it appear that opposition to the president’s health-care plan was bigger than it was.

“The people who exposed this: Jon Stewart of the Daily Show on Comedy Central,” Dunn said yesterday at the Bloomberg Washington Summit. “That’s where you are getting fact-checking and investigative journalism these days.”

As I said, it is unfortunate and intolerable that Fox News Channel abandoned fact and objectivity to artificially inflate attendance at the health care rally. But if Dunn is going to knock Fox and praise MSNBC, perhaps she should recall this:

This, if you remember, was MSNBC's report showing a law-abiding gun owner attending a protest outside Barack Obama’s health care town hall event in Phoenix, AZ a few weeks ago. Despite best efforts by the Obama-loving press to juxtapose the rifle with another, slightly lighter-complexioned protester, the reality is that the gun owner in question in that case was indeed black.

What's worse is that, while Hannity's program only used evidence of previous opposition to this administration's health care reform plan to illustrate further opposition to health care reform--it's not as though less people oppose the plan now as in September, in fact polls show just the opposit--MSNBC's tomfoolery was actually used to insinuate that conservatives were somehow prone to violence and to augment the left's already growing obsession with assassination.

Even if she had left it unsaid, and even though she is on her way out as communications director, we all know that Dunn speaks for the president. This president knows no opposition. He skated into political office on every single level, up until his run last year for the presidency. And, even then, he was in a different class than Arizona Sen. John McCain, and had the full perceptional power of the mainstream media behind him the entire way. For that reason, this president is naturally averse to criticism; hence, the war on Fox News Channel.

Dunn is wrong. The president is wrong. And while production heads should roll at Fox News Channel for dealing a tremendous blow to essential credibility on the right, it should be pointed out that the very art carried out so amateurishly by the folks at Hannity has been all but perfected by the network's left-leaning counterparts.

Nevertheless, the Hannity misrepresentation will be used again and again by the left to make the right's efforts look disingenuous when, in reality, they are anything but. All issues with Anita Dunn aside, this should serve as a lesson on just how valuable credibility is when it comes to fighting the forces of progressivism and liberalism for the future of America.

KSM, New York City and My Growing Isolationism

2009-11-15T12:26:00.001-05:00

680 miles. That's how far I drove on Friday between our house outside of Philadelphia and our future hometown of Charleston, South Carolina. That's also the distance between Karachi, Pakistan and Kabul, Afghanistan. And, interestingly enough, that was about how long it took me to have a sea change with regard to American presence in the latter nation.

Get them out. Now.

Since the morning of September 11, 2001, I've been all for the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Like it or not, radical Islam declared war on us a long time ago, the three thousand dead on that day was a gigantic wake-up call, and we absolutely needed to take the fight to the terrorists. We were at war. We were fighting and killing radical Islamic terrorists in their backyards so they wouldn't kill us in ours. And for seven years, it worked.

Now, however, in the wake of the second terrorist attack on American soil since Barack Obama took residency in the White House--the murder of an Army recruiter in Arkansas by Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad was the first, and Nidal Malik Hasan's shooting spree the second--it has finally become completely and undoubtedly evident that this president and this administration is no longer interested in fighting a war to ensure the safety and security of Americans on their own soil. The decision to bring 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad to New York City for a federal trial was the last straw. And so long as Barack Hussein Obama is no longer taking this fight against radical Islam seriously, I don't want another American dying or even getting a paper cut for this president.

I'm done with it. Call me a flip-flopper if you'd like. I don't care. Why should sons and daughters and mothers and fathers already sacrificing so much sacrifice their very lives for a president who doesn't think enough of them or their service to acknowledge properly the slaughter of 13 of their Army brothers and sisters here at home? Why should they die while he dithers? Why should little boys and little girls stand at their father or mother's gravesite when this president refuses to stand up against political correctness and fight this war for real?

Conducting a law enforcement operation rather than fighting a war has made the United States of America look weak and toothless. Frankly, we've looked that way since the second day of Barack Obama's presidency, when he vowed to close the state-of-the-art terrorist detainee facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba without so much as an inkling of where he would deposit the terrorists inside. And the toothlessness continued this past spring, when the president entertained the idea of capitulating with the ACLU and releasing photographs of alleged detainee abuse, images that would undoubtedly incense an already incensed Muslim population and cause the death of more troops. Between then and now, we've seen the Justice Department's decision to investigate the intelligence community for doing the work necessary to keep our country safe, and heard unsubstantiated statements made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that intelligence officials intentionally lied to Congress. We've watched as this president decided to order that all detainees captured on the battlefield be read their Miranda rights, and now we have the chance to see Khalid Sheikh Mohammad transported to within a few blocks of the buildings he worked to bring down for a fill American civilian trial.

What happened to the promises made by Barack Obama that KSM and the others would receive a full military trial? There's a reason that these animals aren't permitted into the civilian system -- for one, they would be granted the same rights and privileges as the Americans they killed. And, second, in the civilian criminal system, there are a wealth of technicalities and such which will be at the disposal of those defending the indefensible. These men were captured and held in a way which was never, ever anticipated would lead to a civilian trial. Besides the inherent problem in publicizing our intelligence-gathering information, a civilian trial could lead to dismissal outright. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder promises execution, but since when is a promise from this administration worth more than a penno. If you want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed executed, then just execute him already. Due Process Rights are reserved for Americans, not those who wish to murder them.

Regardless, the victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001 deserve better. Likewise, the victims of the attack which will likely happen in New York City during the course of Barack Obama's big show trial deserve better as well. This is politics and ignorance and the politics of ignorance, plain and simple, and it is a game increasingly well-played by this president.

I've said in the past, and continue to say, that I prefer our servicemen and servicewomen fight this war and win with honor. However, when they have to watch their six just as much as they must scan their surroundings, the war is over. These men and women are fighting a political battle for President Obama, fighting for things like health care reform and cap-and-trade and political capital rather than against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and purveyors of radical Islamic jihad. Winning, for this president, is no longer--and has never been--an option.

Bring our fighting men and women home right now. In bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammad to New York City, Barack Obama is willing to risk the safety and security of New Yorkers for his political agenda, and time after time we see that he uses the military for the same purposes. He perceives more of a threat from vociferous conservatives than bomb-strapped radical Muslims. He has a problem with America as a superpower. Consequently, he's not taking the Global War on Terror seriously. Why should the very brave men and women he so disdains die for him and his indecisiveness?

ANOTHER NOTE: Incidentally, I heard today someone floating the idea of a million-man march in protest to this decision, to take place in New York City. I think it's an excellent idea. But I doubt anyone in the White House will listen.

Pull the other one. It rings a bell.

2009-11-15T08:36:00.006-05:00

By Nathaniel Givens
America's Right

According to Politico, President Obama has already sketched out his objective for 2010s State of the Union Address. And - get this - the main objective? Cut the federal deficit.

(I'll wait for the laughter to die down.)

According to the article:

The president's plan, which the officials said was under discussion before this month’s Democratic election setbacks, represents both a practical and a political calculation by this White House.

I'm sure it was "under discussion" before the 2009 election results rolled in. Between the narrow survival of a toothless cap-and-trade bill, the health care reform effort on life support, and the growing public skepticism about the make-believe "created or saved" jobs there was plenty to discuss. And I'm pretty sure the discussion came to an end when the election results came in.

Politico outlines the practical and political considerations:

On the practical side, Obama has spent more money on new programs in nine months than Bill Clinton did in eight years, pushing the annual deficit to $1.4 trillion. This leaves little room for big spending initiatives.

On the political side, Obama can help moderate Democrats avoid some tough votes in an election year and, perhaps more importantly, calm the nerves of independent voters who are voicing big concerns with the big spending and deficits

That's all pretty obvious stuff. The questions I have are whether Obama has any intention to actually cut spending and how this will play out in the GOP. You might wonder why I even have any question about Obama's sincerity. The reason is that there's recent precedent. Bill Clinton moved hard to the right to survive after the Republican swept into power in 1994. You know that that date has got to be on the minds of every Democrat politician in the nation. And one simple way to forestall a repeat of 1994 would be to preemptively move a little bit to the right now rather than having to move more to the left later. So it's possible.

But not likely.

For all the talk about cutting spending the White House has not talked about cutting the cap-and-trade legislation nor are they expressing a willingness to make cuts to entitlements or to defense spending. Most likely the Obama administration is scrambling to find symbolic cuts and accounting tricks to inflate them so that a token sacrifice can be laid on the altar of fiscal responsibility to avert disaster in 2010.

In a way that's a relief. Token gestures are almost certain to do nothing but anger the independents that Obama once wooed so successfully. He still has the right rhetoric:

A lot of independents, Democrats and Republicans -- all are concerned about is what are we going to do about this long-term debt. We've got to show people that we are responsible stewards for their taxpayer dollars and that we're taking some serious steps to at least lay the foundation -- the pathway -- for bringing those deficits down over the next several years.

The problem is that you can't promise people that you're going to increase spending and cut spending at the same time. That would be a stretch, even for the man who pulled off the Great Con of 2008.

---------------
Nathaniel Givens is classical liberal studying economics in graduate school. He and his wife work as business analysis consultants, and they live as undercover conservatives with their two small children in a socialist bastion of a college town. Nathaniel maintains a public Facebook Page, and he has been writing for America's Right since December 2008.

New Special Forces Recruit

2009-11-14T13:09:00.006-05:00

Assigned Reading: Bear Kills Militants in Kashmir
(FROM: BBC News)

A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say.

Two other militants escaped, one of them badly wounded, after the attack in Kulgam district, south of Srinagar.

My first thought was that the pair of militants were unarmed, or maybe sleeping, but it turns out they had at least two assault rifles and ammunition. I'm no military strategist, but we need to find this bear, recruit it, and send it to Afghanistan.

This Wasn't a Bow, Either

2009-11-14T11:11:00.008-05:00

Embarrassing. And typical.

By Nathaniel Givens
America's Right

Remember Obama's infamous bow before the King of Saudi Arabia? A bow that the Obama administration insisted was not a bow ("It wasn't a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah,") and yet which clearly was a bow?

Well, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, Team Obama is at it again. This time the recipient of our Commander in Chief's obsequiousness was Emperor Akihito of Japan.

This encore performance is simply outrageous. No excuse whatsoever. As Ed Morrissey of HotAir put it (the emphasis is his):

American Presidents do not bow to royalty. In fact, heads of state do not bow or genuflect to each other in the normal course of diplomacy. At least, they didn’t until this amateur came into office and failed to learn from the first time he did it. What will the White House say this time? He got stomach cramps?

I don't even know what angle of this fiasco to emphasize the most: amateur hour at the White House, disregard for America's status in the world community, or extreme disconnect from fundamental American values.

Let's start with the amateur hour. This is not how heads of state behave. Obama should have known this before he bowed to King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. Even if he hadn't figured it out before then, he most certainly should have figured it out afterward. His own staff had to lie and pretend that what happened didn't happen. Which means they knew it shouldn't have happened. Which makes you want to know: why did it happen again?

But this is more than just a breach of protocol. The protocol - like much formal protocol - exists for a reason. And the reason is symbolic. A head of state represents their nation, and so unless the message you want to convey is "Guess what, my nation is subservient to your nation" you don't bow. This applies to all nations. So what does this say about Obama's feelings towards America?

Then there's the simple value of equality. If any nation on earth should be clear on this it is the United States of America. As Barack Obama may or may not remember, we once had a rather serious disagreement in this country about the role of kings. I seem to remember that there was even an armed conflict, leading to the separation of our nation from our erstwhile monarchy. And, following said separation, there was some discussion about whether or not we ought to have some new royalty of our own. The matter was settled rather conclusively with a resounding "no". Royalty is incompatible with the fundamental principle of equality that lies at the heart of our (classically) liberal republic. It's no small irony that America's most collectivist president--like so many Marxists and socialists before him--is living out the principle that "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".

I'm not sure how the White House is going to react, but I'm fairly certain the MSM will react by downplaying the incident if they cover it at all. "What's the big deal? It's just symbolism?" The big deal is what this tells us about our President. The man is:

A. incompetent in foreign affairs
B. ashamed of his nation
C. unable to grasp the ramifications of "all men are created equal"

--or--

D. all of the above

Take your pick, I suppose.

The silver lining to this national embarrassment is that at least we have another moment of clarity and insight into Obama's character. The Saudi bow was not an exception. It was the rule. I know the conspiracy theorists on the right will see this incident as just an attempt to cover up some spooky Islamic cabal, but let's apply Occam's razor: Obama will bow to any and all royalty so long as they aren't British. Why fabricate tin-foil hats when Obama is working so hard to prove the conservative case on his own?

Let us take this for what it is and continue the difficult job of slowly bringing the American people out of denial. They didn't elect a centrist pragmatist with an eye towards change by rejecting imaginary failed policies of the past. They elected a left-wing novice with an eye towards change by embracing the true failed policies of the past.

---------------
Nathaniel Givens is classical liberal studying economics in graduate school. He and his wife work as business analysis consultants, and they live as undercover conservatives with their two small children in a socialist bastion of a college town. Nathaniel maintains a public Facebook Page, and he has been writing for America's Right since December 2008.

Right Lesson, Wrong Teachers

2009-11-13T23:11:00.007-05:00

The GOP needs direction for 2010, but the rudders should only lean to the right.

2010 could very well be 1994 all over again. 2010 could very well be 1994 all over again. I've written that sentence so many times here at America's Right that, if my name were Dorothy and I owned a pair of ruby slippers, it probably would have happened by now.

So, for all my talk of history repeating itself, I should be happy that people are talking about the sequel to 1994's Contract with America, right? For all my talk of the GOP needing to return to first principles, I should be thrilled, right?

I would be. Except that the people talking about those things are NY-23's own Tweedledee and TweedleRINO, RNC Chairman Michael Steele and former House Speaker--and architect of the first Contract with America--Newt Gingrich.

Frankly, it's a credibility problem. I may be a little pudgy around the middle, but I wouldn't buy a diet and exercise video made by Rosie O'Donnell and Michael Moore. Why? No, not because they're both on the far left. No, not because they're both a few entrees short of a smorgasbord in the intelligence department. I'd leave that hypothetical movie--Sweatin' to the Donuts II?--on the shelf because of the credibility gap.

Similarly, when it comes to people choosing to remake the Republican Party, the last people I go to at this moment are Steele and Gingrich. Steele has been out and about doing his best Al Sharpton impression and playing the race card. Gingrich has been spending more time on a love seat talking climate change with Nancy Pelosi than Al Gore spends laughing at tree-huggers and their spartan lives from his multi-million dollar, energy-Lewinskying Tennessee mansion. And both championed Dede Scozzafava in the aforementioned congressional race, a liberal Republican at best who dropped out and endorsed the Democrat.

I'd rather have Billy Joel give me a driving lesson than Steele and Gingrich instruct me on how to remake the Republican Party. I'd rather get parenting tips from Britney Spears. Or dancing instruction from Stephen Hawking. In other words, when it comes to the best direction for the GOP to ensure a return to growth, prosperity and security in America, these particular guys have worn out their welcome.

Of course, the idea that the GOP needs direction is nothing groundbreaking. The party absolutely does. But that new Contract with America, or Plan for America, or Recipe for Prosperity or whatever you want to call it should start first by addressing the proper size, scope, role, reach and function of the federal government.

Every issue should be addressed by looking at that argument first. We can create jobs by getting government out of the way and reducing the tax and regulatory burden on American businesses small and large. We can become truly energy independent by lifting government restrictions on drilling offshore and in Alaska and employ an all-of-the-above policy approach. We can reduce health care costs and increase access by kicking government to the back burner and harnessing the power of the free market by opening up interstate competition and allowing small businesses to pool employees. And we can best address education by eliminating the Department of Education and returning discretion to each of the individual states.

People are mad. And while I'm sure that Michael Steele and Newt Gingrich have noticed, I'm not sure they truly understand why. In this era of trillion-dollar entitlement programs and more interference from Washington, D.C. in every aspect of our lives, people want less government, not more. They want sustainability or, even better, prosperity. Steele and Gingrich may talk the talk from time to time, but every chance they've been given to walk the walk, they've stumbled.

Now is not the time for stumbling. 2010 can be 1994 all over again. But we need direction. And that direction absolutely must come from people who have learned from the mistakes made by a Republican Party moving to the center, not from entrenched Capitol Hill stalwarts who only seem to lean right after they've been caught jumping left.

Thinking about US Strategy in Afghanistan

2009-11-13T16:07:00.001-05:00

Assigned Reading: Al-Qa'ida prefers U.S. to stick around
(FROM: The Australian)

There's a lot of talk about Afghanistan these days, but almost all of it involves domestic politics. Conservatives--and to an increasing extent all Americans--are frustrated with Obama's indecision. The country is sending a message that Jeff summed up nicely: fish or cut bait, Mr. President.

Obviously some decision is better than no decision, but I'm not seeing a lot of discussion about which decision would be best. Prominent counter-terrorism expert Leah Farrall weighed in a couple of days ago with a thoughtful perspective that is worth reading. She writes:

A key objective is the denial of al-Qa'ida access to sanctuary in Afghanistan -- a goal the Bush administration also shared. There has been vigorous debate within the US political establishment about what strategy will best achieve this goal. Counter-insurgency proponents argue for increased troop levels while others believe it can be achieved by a targeted counter-terrorism campaign with a lighter force footprint.
Both of these approaches rest on the longstanding premise that al-Qa'ida wants another safe haven in Afghanistan. However, this premise is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of its strategic intentions. Afghanistan's value to al-Qa'ida is as a location for jihad, not a sanctuary.
While calling for jihad to liberate occupied Muslim lands is a potent radicalisation tool, it only yields substantive benefits when there is such a conflict at hand. Before September 11, 2001, most volunteers at al-Qa'ida's camps in Afghanistan wanted training for armed jihad. Al-Qa'ida had problems with attrition of its members and trainees who left its camps to seek armed jihad elsewhere, usually in Chechnya.
This was one of the driving reasons behind Osama bin Laden's decision to attack the US with the specific aim of inciting it to invade Afghanistan. For bin Laden, this created a new, exploitable jihad. Since the US invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq, al-Qa'ida has become the pre-eminent group fighting a self-declared jihad against an occupying force. These invasions allowed al-Qa'ida to exploit allegations that the US was intent on occupying Muslim lands.
A withdrawal of coalition forces from Afghanistan would undoubtedly hand al-Qa'ida and the Taliban a propaganda victory. However, a victory would deny al-Qa'ida its most potent source of power, influence, funding and recruits -- the armed jihad.

I think Farrall is right as far as her analysis goes, but I'm not sure that it changes much from a strategic standpoint. The ironic thing is that both the US and bin Laden may want the same thing for the time being: conflict in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda benefits from having a flashpoint to galvanize recruits. The US benefits because we'd rather face more radicals in the Afghan wilderness than fewer radicals in the American suburbs.

This may work as a short-run equilibrium, but in the long-run we need a better solution.