A Refreshing Break for the Truth

You may not have heard it reported but Obama was not the only one called a liar last night. Sarah Palin was, as well, and, unlike Obama, who was the one who was calling her that, she didn't have it said to her face.

She posted on her Facebook page right after the president's speech:

After all the rhetoric is put aside, one principle ran through President Obama’s speech tonight: that increased government involvement in health care can solve its problems.

Many Americans fundamentally disagree with this idea. We know from long experience that the creation of a massive new bureaucracy will not provide us with “more stability and security,” but just the opposite. It's hard to believe the President when he says that this time he and his team of bureaucrats have finally figured out how to do things right if only we’ll take them at their word.

Our objections to the Democrats’ health care proposals are not mere “bickering” or “games.” They are not an attempt to “score short term political points.” And it’s hard to listen to the President lecture us not to use “scare tactics” when in the next breath he says that “more will die” if his proposals do not pass.

In his speech the President directly responded to concerns I’ve raised about unelected bureaucrats being given power to make decisions affecting life or death health care matters. He called these concerns “bogus,” “irresponsible,” and “a lie” — so much for civility. After all the name-calling, though, what he did not do is respond to the arguments we’ve made, arguments even some of his own supporters have agreed have merit.

In fact, after promising to “make sure that no government bureaucrat .... gets between you and the health care you need,” the President repeated his call for an Independent Medicare Advisory Council — an unelected, largely unaccountable group of bureaucrats charged with containing Medicare costs. He did not disavow his own statement that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost ... the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives....” He did not disavow the statements of his health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, and continuing to pay his salary with taxpayer dollars proves a commitment to his beliefs. The President can keep making unsupported assertions, but until he directly responds to the arguments I’ve made, I’m going to call him out too.

Say It Again, Joe!

The AP, fresh from reciting its “I Pledge” promise to Obama to use its position to protect the president, is helpfully reporting that Joe Wilson’s outburst at Obama’s speech last night overshadows the president’s weak showing.

It is meant to be a diversion from the issue of the public option covering immigrants, which it almost certainlt is going to do.

It won’t work.

Only 10 days ago the AP was celebrating the release of the Iraqi who threw his shoes at George W. Bush. “Muntadhar al-Zeidi's act during Bush's last visit to Iraq as president turned the 30-year-old reporter into a folk hero across the Arab world amid anger over the 2003 invasion.”

Vocal outbursts during sessions of a deliberative body are not that shocking. At worst it was a breach of decorum, but compared to standards lowered by Democrats and liberal activists in recent years, it is really rather tame. All of us lived through eight years of former President Bush being accused by Congressional Democrats of being a liar, a Nazi, a racist, a murderer, and worse, Cindy Sheehan being hailed for her obnoxious behavior, and Bush being openly booed and hissed by Democrats during a State of the Union speech.

I applaud Wilson for, literally, standing up and calling out the president when he deserved to be called out. I also applaud him for apologizing for incivility, while reiterating his disagreement with Obama’s statement.

No One Should Be Surpised About Jones

Andrew McCarthy has written today on NRO’s The Corner:

For anyone with common sense and a willingness to look at what we were allowed to learn about Obama's background and associations, nothing about Van Jones is the least bit surprising. Nothing about Obama's penchant for government by radical, unaccountable czars is the least bit surprising. What is surprising is that smart people continue to treat these developments as if they were abberations that somehow happen independent of Obama, as if the president just needs to do a better job of vetting staffers. The selection of Van Jones is who Obama is and what he is about. Bad things are not happening to our president; our president is doing bad things — as we should have known he would.

Billy Graham, Meet Ashton Kutcher

I started out thinking that the Demi-Moore directed video, “I Pledge,” was part of a presidential push to recruit America’s public school children into Obamajugend.



The first appearance of this video in a Utah schoolhouse only days before Obama’s presidential address to America’s Youth, and at the very moment when Department of Education-created lesson plans about how students can help the president were hotlined to prinicipals, seemed like just too much of a coincidence.

And it still seems reasonable to me that fertile brains in Obama’s support staff opportunistically deployed the video at this time as part of Obama’s initiative to get America’s kids on his side.

But the video wasn’t created at the administration’s direction. It was originally produced by Ashton and Demi as their inaugural gift for Obama, a declaration of their intention to help the One transform reality.

During the presidential inauguration, actors/human/animal right activists Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore stepped up with a staggering group of other well-known [sic] entertainment A-listers and went on the record for very personal “I Pledge” declarations on how they’ll make the world better in 2009 and beyond. The video, directed by Moore was presented to President Obama during the festivities. One outspoken pledge was by Moore who stated that she and Kutcher were determined to help free 1,000,000 people currently in slavery, within five years.

A less outspoken Jason Bateman didn’t go that far, pledging only that he would limit his toilet-flushing strictly to when he poops. Mainly, the staggering group of A-listers take turns flexing their self-esteem and telling the camera what they pledge: to smile more, to get to know their neighbors, to stop buying bottled water, to buy a hybrid. One guy who’d never heard of Medicare pledged to fight for health care for seniors.

But it’s not the individual pledges that matter. What matters is when Ashton and Demi pledge themselves to be a “servant to our president, and to all mankind.”

Depending on the broadness of your theology, that may be a distinction without a difference.

For an audience of grade-school kids, the overall commercial message of this video is, “we’re really cool, and you can be cool too by pledging to Obama.” And it’s a lot easier to join a club that doesn’t demand too much, a selling-point common to all liberal religions. (“Our only creed is, Just be yourself--only more smug!”). The variety and banality of these A-lister pledges won’t freak some kid out that he’s being asked to pledge celibacy or to serve his country in uniform. “Pledge allegiance to the funk? Yes I can!”

Not that I demean Ashton’s and Demi’s horror at white slavery--(the totally unPC name by which it was once known) as banal. The sex trade is real, and awful. George W. Bush was condemning it, the first U.S. president to do so, as a “humanitarian crisis” and a “special evil”, and all without benefit of Hollywood support. (As far back as 2006, Bush opponent Nicholas Kristof wrote that on this “crucial issue, Mr. Bush is leaving a legacy that he and America can be proud of.”).

But “I Pledge” isn’t really a rallying cry against white slavery--that’s just Ashton’s and Demi’s thing. The video is an invitation to youngsters, who are impressionable when their instincts for idealism and service are just beginning to awaken, to lend those unformed instincts to the service of a particular person, namely one President Barack Hussein Obama. Had an NFL player at a Bible camp given a similar message, it would end with an invitation to give your heart to Jesus.

Most Obama supporters detest that sort of evangelism, but, in fairness, at least Jesus has two-millenium of witnesses testifying that He is God, a good portion of them martyrs and saints. The testimony for Obama’s godhood goes back barely two years, and includes Oprah Winfrey and Chris Matthews.

Maybe critics of Obama’s decision to speak to public school kids, and have pupils inscripturate his wiser sayings, shouldn’t be complaining that it’s an attempt to indoctrinate children. Maybe they should be complaining that it’s an attempt to establish a religion.

Britain's Government Health Care Killing Patients Early, Doctors Warn

What do you bet there’s no such language anywhere in the statutes establishing Britain’s National Health System that mentions “death pathway”?

This is from the September 2, 2009 Daily Telegraph:

Sentenced to death on the NHS

Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors have warned.

By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients."

The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.

The scheme, called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), was designed to reduce patient suffering in their final hours.

Developed by Marie Curie, the cancer charity, in a Liverpool hospice it was initially developed for cancer patients but now includes other life threatening conditions.

It was recommended as a model by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the Government’s health scrutiny body, in 2004.

It has been gradually adopted nationwide and more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England currently use the system.

Under the guidelines the decision to diagnose that a patient is close to death is made by the entire medical team treating them, including a senior doctor.

They look for signs that a patient is approaching their final hours, which can include if patients have lost consciousness or whether they are having difficulty swallowing medication.

However, doctors warn that these signs can point to other medical problems.
Patients can become semi-conscious and confused as a side effect of pain-killing drugs such as morphine if they are also dehydrated, for instance.

When a decision has been made to place a patient on the pathway doctors are then recommended to consider removing medication or invasive procedures, such as intravenous drips, which are no longer of benefit.

If a patient is judged to still be able to eat or drink food and water will still be offered to them, as this is considered nursing care rather than medical intervention.

Dr Hargreaves said that this depended, however, on constant assessment of a patient’s condition.

He added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.

He said: “I have been practising palliative medicine for more than 20 years and I am getting more concerned about this “death pathway” that is coming in.

“It is supposed to let people die with dignity but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Patients who are allowed to become dehydrated and then become confused can be wrongly put on this pathway.”

He added: “What they are trying to do is stop people being overtreated as they are dying.

“It is a very laudable idea. But the concern is that it is tick box medicine that stops people thinking.”

He said that he had personally taken patients off the pathway who went on to live for “significant” amounts of time and warned that many doctors were not checking the progress of patients enough to notice improvement in their condition.

Prof Millard said that it was “worrying” that patients were being “terminally” sedated, using syringe drivers, which continually empty their contents into a patient over the course of 24 hours.

In 2007-08 16.5 per cent of deaths in Britain came about after continuous deep sedation, according to researchers at the Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, twice as many as in Belgium and the Netherlands.

“If they are sedated it is much harder to see that a patient is getting better,” Prof Millard said.

Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, said: “Even the tiniest things that happen towards the end of a patient’s life can have a huge and lasting affect on patients and their families feelings about their care.

“Guidelines like the LCP can be very helpful but healthcare professionals always need to keep in mind the individual needs of patients.

“There is no one size fits all approach.”

A spokesman for Marie Curie said: “The letter highlights some complex issues related to care of the dying.

“The Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient was developed in response to a societal need to transfer best practice of care of the dying from the hospice to other care settings.

“The LCP is not the answer to all the complex elements of this area of health care but we believe it is a step in the right direction.”

The pathway also includes advice on the spiritual care of the patient and their family both before and after the death.

It has also been used in 800 instances outside care homes, hospices and hospitals, including for people who have died in their own homes.

The letter has also been signed by Dr Anthony Cole, the chairman of the Medical Ethics Alliance, Dr David Hill, an anaesthetist, Dowager Lady Salisbury, chairman of the Choose Life campaign and Dr Elizabeth Negus a lecturer in English at Barking University.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “People coming to the end of their lives should have a right to high quality, compassionate and dignified care.
"The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) is an established and recommended tool that provides clinicians with an evidence-based framework to help delivery of high quality care for people at the end of their lives.

"Many people receive excellent care at the end of their lives. We are investing £286 million over the two years to 2011 to support implementation of the End of Life Care Strategy to help improve end of life care for all adults, regardless of where they live.”

'London Mayor Recommends Ramadan Fast for All'

From the Israel National News:


The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has recommended that non-Muslims take the opportunity of the month of Ramadan to fast, along with their Muslim neighbors, in order to promote "understanding between cultures."

Johnson told members of a London mosque that with Muslims so much a part of London life, it would be befitting for non-Muslims to get to know their fellow Londoners' customs and religion better.

"Whether it's in theater, comedy, sports, music or politics, Muslims are challenging the traditional stereotypes and showing that they are, and want to be, a part of the mainstream community," Johnson said. ''That's why I urge people, particularly during Ramadan, to find out more about Islam, increase your understanding and learning, even fast for a day with your Muslim neighbor and break your fast at the local mosque. I would be very surprised if you didn't find that you share more in common than you thought," he said.

'Muslims are at the heart of every aspect of society," he added. "Their contribution is something that all Londoners benefit from. Muslim police officers, doctors, scientists and teachers are an essential part of the fabric of London." There are currently 1.6 million Muslims in Britain, most of whom fast during Ramadan, Muslim community officials told reporters.

Not all Londoners embraced the idea. A local English Democrat leader, Steve Uncles, blasted Johnson's comments, saying that "the indigenous culture of this country is based on Christianity and Paganism. Of course, as an open and tolerant society, if people want to practice other religions, then good luck to them. But the state should not be funding them because otherwise we will lose our culture."

Although perhaps the most original, Johnson's is far from the only effort by Western politicians to honor Ramadan and Muslims. Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama hosted a Ramadan break the fast meal at the White House. "Islam, as we know, is part of America," Obama said during the dinner. "Together we have a responsibility to foster engagement grounded in mutual interest and mutual respect."

A report Saturday said that Egyptian police had arrested 155 people in the southern city of Aswan for not fasting during Ramadan. According to local reports, police have targeted people seen eating or drinking anything during daylight hours. According to one local official, the police campaign is evidence of an increased Muslim fervor among police, while another official said that the local government was trying to appease Islamists, who have increased in popularity in recent months.

There was no word on whether London Mayor Johnson was planning to suggest that Muslims and Christians fast on Yom Kippur in order to better understand their Jewish neighbors.

All Hat and No Cattle

I see where a Dearborn attorney, Majed Moughni, who is Muslim, has written a letter to the Press & Guide criticizing CAIR-MI’s recent federal lawsuit over a woman being ordered by a Wayne County judge to remove her headscarf in court as “frivolous.” (“Disappointed with CAIR”).

According to Moughni, the judge, William Callahan, “is one of the most respected, knowledgeable, and fairest judges,” and “has never shown any discrimination and he has never requested that any Muslim women remove their hijab.”

Further, Moughni described the woman’s, Raneen Albaghdady’s, overall dress as “not the religious hijab” but “more of a fashion statement.”

From the video, it appeared most of Mrs. Albagdady’s hair was exposed. She had a scarf placed on top of her well-styled hairdo. This is not hijab in any way, shape or form. Hijab is the covering of body parts, (including the hair, neck, arms, legs, and private parts) so as not to attract the attention of men.Mrs. Albagdady’s dress is in contradiction to hijab as it attracts attention and is more of a fashion statement as opposed to a religious garb.

Moughini, who describes CAIR as an organization of “high caliber,” (Eek!), thinks this whole thing makes the Muslim community look bad.

Dawud Walid, CAIR-MI’s fearless leader, responded with a letter of his own (“CAIR-MI director rejects label of 'frivolous' in regard to suit over hijab”), saying that Moughini isn’t the “hijab police.”

Besides, writes Dawud, how can you call this lawsuit “frivolous” when “Michigan Civil Rights Commissioner Attorney Nabih Ayad” is the one who filed it? You may remember Ayad as one of the lawyers who sued to keep the government from wiretapping international calls from terrorists.

It doesn’t matter. This lawsuit was DOA as soon as Ayad filed it. Ms. Albagdady willingly removed her headscarf when ordered to by Judge Callahan, stating “OK, it doesn't matter.” Callahan's office quite reasonably claimed he had no idea there was any religious purpose in the headscarf.

Not that this stopped Ms. Albagdady, who came to America from Saddam’s Iraq, from declaring a few weeks later that the whole experience left her “terrified” and “humiliated.”

She told a news conference in August “she was intimidated by Callahan and feared she would be arrested if she refused to remove her hijab. 'I come from a country where you can't say no to a judge in a courtroom,' she said. "

Moughni says Ms. Albagdady didn’t look so intimidated later in the hearing when she was arguing with the judge about the cost of filing her case. (“Dearborn attorney backs judge in woman's suit over hijab”)

Nor is it a sign of intimidation to drop a lawsuit on the circuit court judge you claim to be so scared of.

I don’t know if it’s the leopard print hair wrap or the Mediterranean cougar ‘tude but I know I'd think twice about cutting off this lady’s cart at Wal-Mart.

Ayad practically admitted that this whole thing is just for show, anyway, a tactic in a battle to force the Michigan Supreme Court to relent on its ruling that allows judges to order women to remove face veils in court.

Albaghdady appeared before Callahan the day before the state Supreme Court approved the rule. Her lawsuit does not challenge it or address the issue of face veils, said her attorney, Nabih Ayad.

"That's for a later case," he said.

Right.

The Politics of Poseurs

Mark Steyn had this to say in NRO’s Corner:

Megan McArdle writes:

If the right ever wants to get back in power, it needs to start policing its lunatic fringe.

Er, okay. But the left is in power, and it's got Van Jones the Truther in the White House. Which isn't exactly the "fringe". More of a lunatic mainstream, isn't it? Which may be why The New York Times et al have decided there's no story.

Years ago, Canada's Kathy Shaidle made a very good point about "9/11 Was An Inside Job" types like Czar Jones:

I wonder if the nuts even believe what they are saying. Because if something like 9/11 happened in Canada, and I believed with all my heart that, say, Stephen Harper was involved, I don’t think I could still live here. I’m not sure I could stop myself from running screaming to another country. How can you believe that your President killed 2,000 people, and in between bitching about this, just carry on buying your vente latte and so forth?

Is Van Jones a real Truther or a faux Truther? The White House position is that he's the latter - hey, he just glanced at it, saw it was some routine impeach-Bush-for-killing-thousands-of-his-fellow-Americans thing, and signed it without reading it; we've all been there, right?

Van Jones Trutherism, like Van Jones Communism and Van Jones Eco-Racism Theory, is a kind of decadence: If you really believed 9/11 was an inside job, you'd be in fear of your life. Instead, for a cutting-edge poseur like Jones, it's a marketing niche, one that gives you a certain cachet with the right kind of people - like, apparently, Barack Obama. (Bill Clinton, to his credit, felt differently.)

I think Steyn is right. When I found out Jones’s name was on that Truther site, I figured he didn’t believe a word of it. Just as Steyn guesses, Jones just lent his name because he wanted to be known as a Bush-hater in the right circles, and what the hell, the truth doesn’t matter.

Which is much more despicable than being a Truther. And I think this administration is just full of people like Van Jones.

Calling the Obama Bluff

Over the weekend Pres. Obama called for an honest debate about his health care plan, a call about as genuine, I’m sure, as Attorney General Eric Holder’s call for a dialogue about race.

Obama said the overhaul would not cover illegal immigrants nor use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and he does not intend a government takeover of health care — as critics have claimed at contentious town hall-style meetings with members of Congress.

He also took a swipe at "death panels," an idea former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin introduced on her Facebook page.

"As every credible person who has looked into it has said, there are no so-called death panels — an offensive notion to me and to the American people," Obama said. "These are phony claims meant to divide us."

First of all, Sarah Palin didn’t “introduce” the idea of death panels in her August 7, 2009 Facebook post. Betsy McCaughey was all over this in February, warning about the health-care rationing controls hidden in the President’s stimulus bill.

Then, Rep. Michele Bachmann gave a speech warning about this on the floor of the House of Representatives on July 31st., quoting directly from the mouths of Obama’s own health-care advisers on their theories of limiting health care for the less promising cases.

All Sarah Palin did was mention how this elephant in the room was threatening her own child, Trig.

But some people just can’t handle Sarah Palin, so here are some other “credible” persons who’ve looked into it and seen the equivalent of life-denying rationing:

Ann Althouse: "I have found myself saying, in conversation, 'I'm afraid Obama is going to kill me.'"

Nat Hentoff: "President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board . . .decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law."

Liberal Washington Post reporter Charles Lane: "[A]s I read it, Section 1233 is not totally innocuous. . . . [because it] addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones. Supporters protest that they're just trying to facilitate choice -- even if patients opt for expensive life-prolonging care. I think they protest too much: If it's all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what's it doing in a measure to 'bend the curve' on health-care costs?"

Good question. Oh, and I consider myself credible, at least in my own mind. I have looked into this, and I've got no doubts these people have every intention of establishing government control over end-of-life decisions for the sake of what they consider a higher good.

But Obama doesn't really want you to look into it for yourself. He wants you to trust him that all the really credible people agree with him that everything is hunky-dory with this plan.

Now do you really want to take Jon Stewart's scornful word for something this important?

Old Soldiers Never (Used To) Die, Now the VA Has End-of-Life Counsellors

From the Wall Street Journal:

The Death Book for Veterans
Ex-soldiers don't need to be told they're a burden to society.

By JIM TOWEY

If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."

The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?"

There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."

When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?

One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran's health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.

I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update "Your Life, Your Choices" between 2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as "Compassion and Choices").

This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to "Your Life, Your Choices." Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America's 24 million veterans deserve better.

Many years ago I created an advance care planning document called "Five Wishes" that is today the most widely used living will in America, with 13 million copies in national circulation. Unlike the VA's document, this one does not contain the standard bias to withdraw or withhold medical care. It meets the legal requirements of at least 43 states, and it runs exactly 12 pages.

After a decade of observing end-of-life discussions, I can attest to the great fear that many patients have, particularly those with few family members and financial resources. I lived and worked in an AIDS home in the mid-1980s and saw first-hand how the dying wanted more than health care—they wanted someone to care.

If President Obama is sincere in stating that he is not trying to cut costs by pressuring the disabled to forgo critical care, one good way to show that commitment is to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on "Your Life, Your Choices." He should make sure in the future that VA decisions are guided by values that treat the lives of our veterans as gifts, not burdens.

Mr. Towey, president of Saint Vincent College, was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (2002-2006) and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dignity.

When Left and Right Both Smell a Rat

Writer Nat Hentoff is a leftist and an atheist who's always had credibility with me because of his unwavering pro-life stand, and his straight-down-the-line defense of civil liberties (life included).

Hentoff reacted last week to Obama’s health care plans by writing, “I am finally scared of a White House administration.”:

I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration.
President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law.

As blogger, The American Catholic points out, “When Sarah Palin on the Right and Nat Hentoff on the Left both view with alarm the idea of government panels having the final say on medical treatment, it is time for all citizens to take this issue quite seriously.”

Please read Hentoff's entire article here.

Swastika Equivalence: It's Six of One, 600 Dozen of Another

The Detroit Free Press today had this quizzical observation:

Conspiracy theories ran amok last week over who was responsible for the “Hitler guy” parad­ing around at U.S. Rep. John Dingell’s rowdy town hall meeting Aug. 6 in Romulus.

Jamar Penn, 25, was identified as the one carrying around an oversize-photo of President Barack Obama with a Hitler mustache. He man­aged to appear in a majority of news accounts about the event.

Left-leaners were convinced Penn was evi­dence of a fascist streak in the opposition to the health care plan.

For anyone out there who supports the Obama health initiative and is alarmed by the “Fascist streak” in the opposition, can you explain for me how insulting something one deeply opposes by comparing it with Nazism is evidence that one has a fascist streak?

Why would a Hitler-loving Fascist show his contempt for someone by creating a banner with his enemy’s image made up to resemble his idol and hero?

By the way, for a useful retrospective on recent comparisons of political opponents with Hitler, see Bush as Hitler, Swastika-Mania: A Retrospective , and A Short Walk Down Memory Hole Lane.

Dingell Compares Health-Care Dissidents to KKK

Palin Is Right About the Death Panels

You’re now hearing Sarah Palin being criticized and ridiculed for condemning “death panels” that are referenced nowhere in the House health-care bill. And it’s true there is no reference to the death panels in the House bill.

But that isn’t proof that our Sarah is stupid: it’s proof (as if we needed more) that Barack & Co. are sneaky and deceptive about this very dangerous agenda.

The death panel language isn't in the House bill now because it was hidden in the stimulus bill passed in February. Remember? That was the other bill that Barack & Co. wanted passed before anyone could read it.

Frank Beckmann on Friday described how “the so-called economic stimulus bill” rushed through Congress earlier this year, “put into place the first phases of a government-controlled health care system.” :

Americans eventually discovered that the administration had appropriated more than $16 billion to create a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research and a Health Information Technology department that can fine doctors and hospitals for not making 'meaningful use' of its recommendations on health care.” (“Politicians dismiss health dissidents at their peril”).

Nor are the fears about “death panels” or “killing grandma” (or, in Palin’s case, denying care for her son, Trig), wild exaggerations manufactured by Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck. The plan for government review panels is quite real, and these guys are bound and determined to get them in place.

Former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey described the system in detail back in February, even while Barack was insisting the stimulus bill needed to be passed without delay or debate:

Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan

Barack Obama's stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Elderly Hardest Hit
Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Hidden Provisions

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

More Scrutiny Needed

On Friday, President Obama called it “inexcusable and irresponsible” for senators to delay passing the stimulus bill. In truth, this bill needs more scrutiny.

The health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your health and the economy.

McCaughey provided this update recently about how funding for the quality-of-life panels was secreted in the stimulus bill:

Slipped into the bill was substantial funding for comparative effectiveness research, which is generally code for limiting care based on the patient’s age. Economists are familiar with the formula, where the cost of a treatment is divided by the number of years (called QALYs, or quality-adjusted life years) that the patient is likely to benefit. In Britain, the formula leads to denying treatments for older patients who have fewer years to benefit from care than
younger patients.

When comparative effectiveness research appeared in the stimulus bill, Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., (R., La.) a heart surgeon, warned that it would lead to “denying seniors and the disabled lifesaving care.” He and Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) proposed amendments to no avail that would have barred the federal government from using the research to eliminate treatments for the elderly or deny care based on age.

In a letter . . . to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, White House budget chief Peter Orszag urged Congress to delegate its authority over Medicare to a newly created body within the executive branch. This measure is designed to circumvent the democratic process and avoid accountability to the public for cuts in benefits.

Sounds like Sarah Palin knew exactly what she was talking about.

America Calls Retreat

Steven Emerson gave a chilling interview to Bill Bennett this past week about the unraveling of eight years of the American war against radical Islamic jihad.

You can listen to it here.

'Give Me Yor Tired, You Poor, Your Clunkers, Your Computer Files'

Here’s a little something from our “This Isn’t Creepy At All” Department.

FBI Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

From the Investigative Project on Terrorism:

FBI Replaces Brotherhood-Tainted Liaison with Brotherhood-Tainted Liaison

IPT News
June 25, 2009

A top FBI official met Wednesday with the vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, a move which followed the Bureau's decision "to use ISNA as their official point of contact with the American Muslim community," an email from an intelligence community veteran that was widely distributed Wednesday said.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has previously reported on the depth of ISNA's Muslim Brotherhood ties.

The FBI has not yet commented on the claim. But the IPT has confirmed that the meeting did take place at FBI headquarters. The decision to make ISNA the FBI's contact point came over the objections of case agents and supervisors investigating Muslim Brotherhood activity in the U.S.

Last year, the FBI cut off outreach communication with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), after evidence in the Hamas-support trial against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) raised questions "whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS." The FBI's case agent testified that CAIR was a Hamas front.

Like CAIR, ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial. It is listed among "who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood." Jamal Badawi, an ISNA board member, also was named as an unindicted co-conspirator, listed among people who raised money for HLF.

The evidence involving ISNA, however, was not as deep as it was with CAIR. In CAIR's case, its founders are included on a telephone list for members of a secret Hamas support network in the U.S. created by the Muslim Brotherhood. And they participated in a 1993 meeting of Hamas members and supporters called to discuss ways to thwart U.S.-led peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians.

In that weekend-long meeting, CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad discussed ways to mislead Americans about their goals and ideology. Executive Director Nihad Awad discussed media strategies to help the cause.

In the evidence admitted by the court, ISNA officials were not named among members of the Hamas support network, called the Palestine Committee. But FBI investigative records show it held a significant role in the Brotherhood's U.S. activities. According to an FBI memorandum from the 1980s obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, past "ISNA conferences provided opportunities for the extreme fundamentalist Muslims to meet with their supporters ... The annual conferences are used for both religious and political purposes. The political purpose is to further the Islamic Revolution, which includes providing anti-U.S. and Israel publications and publications that support the war effort of Iran in the Iran-Iraq war."

The Brotherhood is an 80-year-old Egyptian movement which seeks to spread the rule of Shariah, or Islamic law, throughout the world. But some top FBI officials are not convinced the Brotherhood is a problem, a law enforcement source said Thursday. This, despite the fact that FBI investigation has uncovered documents showing the U.S. Brotherhood's goal is "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

The problem, the source said, is too many FBI officials have developed friendly individual relationships with the leadership of groups like ISNA. "As an FBI agent, we use facts and evidence and truth to base our decisions and not because we went to dinner with someone."

ISNA's roots in the Brotherhood are clearly established. Internal Muslim Brotherhood records in evidence the HLF trial show ISNA was created by Muslim Brotherhood members in the U.S. who had been leaders of the Muslim Students Association. In addition, the Chicago Tribune and federal prosecutors in Dallas have documented the link.

"Numerous exhibits were entered into evidence establishing both ISNA's and NAIT's [the North American Islamic Trust, an ISNA subsidiary] intimate relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestine Committee, and the defendants in this case," prosecutors wrote in July 2008.

Sami Al-Arian, an admitted Palestinian Islamic Jihad supporter, acknowledged in an affidavit that he was directly involved with the Brotherhood in 1981, the year he claims to have been among ISNA's founders.

ISNA has never come clean on its Brotherhood connection. In a statement issued in the fall of 2007, it ignored the documents in evidence and claimed it "never was, and is not now, affiliated with or influenced by any international organizations including the Muslim Brotherhood."

In its service, ISNA rallied to the defense of Hamas political leader Mousa Abu Marzook following his arrest by U.S. authorities pending an Israeli warrant. After he was deported to Jordan, Marzook included ISNA among those he thanked for supporting him through his "ordeal." Marzook wrote that ISNA's efforts had "consoled" him.

Meanwhile, ISNA's annual convention is scheduled to begin July 2 in Washington, D.C. This year's conference could have the largest representation of government agencies in the group's history. The FBI and the departments of Justice, State and Homeland Security all are sponsoring information booths and may have speakers in formal programs.

The conference also will feature speakers from other groups rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. Among them, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, spokesman Ibrahim Hooper and former Muslim American Society (MAS) President Esam Omeish and MAS-Freedom Director Mahdi Bray.

The depth of this outreach, especially the FBI's decision to make ISNA its contact to American Muslims, raises a host of troubling questions. ISNA's denials of its Brotherhood roots ring hollow in the face of the public record.

In light of these documented connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and recent controversial statements, the FBI should explain publicly why it is embracing ISNA.

'Revenge of the Shoe Bomber'

From the Thursday Wall Street Journal:

Revenge of the ‘Shoe Bomber’
The terrorist sues to resume his jihad from prison. The Obama administration caves in.

By DEBRA BURLINGAME

Last May at the National Archives, President Barack Obama warned that “more mistakes would occur” if Congress continued to politicize terrorist detention policy and the closure of Guantanamo Bay. “[I]f we refuse to deal with those issues today,” he predicted, “then I guarantee you, they will be an albatross around our efforts to combat terrorism in the future.”

On June 17, at the Administrative Maximum (ADX) penitentiary in Florence, Colo., one of those albatrosses, inmate number 24079-038, began his day with a whole new range of possibilities. Eight days earlier, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver filed notice in federal court that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which applied to that prisoner—Richard C. Reid, a.k.a. the “Shoe Bomber”—were being allowed to expire. SAMs are security directives, renewable yearly, issued by the attorney general when “there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications, correspondence or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury” to others.

Reid was arrested in 2001 for attempting to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami with 197 passengers and crew on board. Why had Attorney General Eric Holder decided not to renew his security measures, kept in place since 2002?

According to court documents filed in a 2007 civil lawsuit against the government, Reid claimed that SAMs violated his First Amendment right of free speech and free exercise of religion. In a hand-written complaint, he asserted that he was being illegally prevented from performing daily “group prayers in a manner prescribed by my religion.” Yet the list of Reid’s potential fellow congregants at ADX Florence reads like a Who’s Who of al Qaeda’s most dangerous members: Ramzi Yousef and his three co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui; “Millennium bomber” Ahmed Ressam; “Dirty bomber” Jose Padilla; Wadih el-Hage, Osama Bin Laden’s personal secretary, convicted in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing that killed 247 people.

In December 2008, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss Reid’s lawsuit. It cited the example of ADX inmate Ahmed Ajaj as an illustration of “the dangers inherent in permitting a group of inmates, of like mind in their opposition to the United States, to congregate for a prayer service conducted in a language not understood by most correctional officers.”

While imprisoned for passport fraud in 1992, Ajaj assisted in the plans to destroy the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, making phone calls to Ramzi Yousef and speaking in code to elude law enforcement monitoring. Ajaj tried to get his “training kit” to Yousef, which included videotapes and notes he had taken on bomb-making while attending a terrorist camp on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Reid’s own SAMs on correspondence had been tightened in 2006 after the shocking discovery that three of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers at ADX, not subject to security directives, had sent 90 letters to overseas terrorist networks, including those associated with the Madrid train bombing. The letters, exhorting jihad and praising Osama bin Laden as “my hero of this generation,” were printed in Arabic newspapers and brandished like trophies to recruit new members.

When setting restrictions on inmate religious practice, the Bureau of Prisons need only meet a reasonableness standard, a very low bar in the case of Muslim terrorists. Justice would easily have prevailed against Reid’s lawsuit; nevertheless it dropped the security measures on Reid after he missed 58 meals in a hunger strike that required medical intervention and forced feeding in April.

On July 6, Justice Department lawyers informed the court that Reid will be given a “new placement” in a “post-SAMs setting.” Whether that entails stepped down security in a different unit or transfer to a less secure facility, the Bureau of Prisons won’t say, and Justice refuses to comment.

Mr. Obama likes to observe that “no one has escaped from supermax,” but if Reid is moved from ADX Florence, he will be the first convicted terrorist to use the First Amendment to sue his way out.

What drove the Obama administration’s decision to cave in to Reid’s demands? The president after all has repeatedly pitched supermax and the federal prison system as a secure alternative to Guantanamo, citing the fact that it handles “all manner of violent and dangerous criminals.” Yet the last thing he needs, as his administration engages in its hasty effort to shut Gitmo down by a fast-approaching deadline, is for lawyers and human-rights activists to use a hunger-striking, near-death prisoner to launch a propaganda campaign fashioned right out of the Gitmo detainees’ playbook. Lawyers who shamelessly compared Gitmo to Nazi concentration camps would think nothing of casting supermax as the next “symbol of America’s shame” and a “rallying cry for our enemies.”

From the outset of his administration, Mr. Obama has been trying to thread the needle between national security policy and his ideological affinity with civil liberties lawyers and human-rights activists, meeting with and consulting them prior to making detainee-related decisions. Though his executive order shutting Guantanamo closely followed the blueprint provided by Human Rights First, leaders of key organizations were stunned when he revealed in an awkward, off-the-record meeting the day before his public announcement at the National Archives that he planned to continue President George W. Bush’s policy of preventive detention.

Michael Ratner, whose human rights organization, the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed the first successful detainee lawsuit in 2002, called Mr. Obama’s proposed U.S. detention scheme a “road to perdition” and nothing more than a plan to “repackage Guantanamo.” Leaders of the so-called Gitmo bar appear poised to launch a flurry of legal challenges the moment the last departing detainee’s feet touch U.S. soil.

In January, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado issued a statement saying that conditions at supermax are “simply another form of torture” worse than Gitmo which “make a mockery of ‘innocent until proven guilty.’” Last month, the ACLU filed a civil lawsuit mirroring Reid’s religious rights claim on behalf of two terrorism inmates held at the Communications Management Unit inside a medium security prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

One of those inmates is Enaam Arnaout, a Syrian-born U.S. citizen serving a 10-year sentence for diverting Muslim charity money to militant Islamic groups in Bosnia and Chechnya. The other, Randall Royer, is serving 20 years for his role recruiting young Muslims in the “Virginia Jihad Network,” a group that used paintball games in 2000-2001 to train for holy war.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly suggested that the security challenge of bringing more than 100 trained and dangerous terrorists onto U.S. soil can be solved by simply installing them in an impenetrable fortress. This view is either disingenuous or naïve. The militant Islamists at Guantanamo too dangerous to release believe that their resistance behind the wire is a continuation of holy war. There is every reason to believe they will continue their jihad once they have been transported to U.S. soil where certain federal judges have signaled a willingness to confer upon them even more rights.

The position of civil rights activists with regard to these prisoners is plain. “If they cannot be convicted,” says ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer, “then you release them.”

Meanwhile, in order to appease political constituencies both here and abroad, the Obama administration is moving full steam ahead, operating on the false premise that giving more civil liberties to religious fanatics bent on destroying Western civilization will make a difference in the Muslim world. In a letter sent to his father as he began his hunger strike, Reid provided a preview of how he will exercise his newly enlarged free speech rights, calling Mr. Obama a “hypocrite” who is “no better than George Bush.” His lawsuit remains active while the Department of Justice works out a settlement that satisfies the man who declared, “I am at war with America.”

Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney and a director of the National September 11 Memorial Foundation, is the sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

When Caesar's Wife Gets a Pass

What would you think if I told you that the press had detailed information that Todd Palin, spouse of the former governor of Alaska, had over a course of years: been involved in several public fistfights, had drawn national attention for throwing adolescent tantrums that disrupted public meetings, had insulted a government official over being a cancer patient, insulted another, a widow, because she "needed to get a man," told members of the public they had no right to petition the government because their race was different from his, had been charged and pleaded guilty to taking bribes to influence the awarding of government contracts and other favors, and pilfered mored than $21,000 in computers and other electronic equipment from government offices?

Love her or hate her, you couldn't help but think, Sarah Palin is toast.

I believe it's safe to say the media fireball would not die down until some time in 2012. Or should that be 2112?

Sarah Palin would finally meet the total career--and perhaps personal--destruction her many bitter enemies have been casting spells for lo these many months. (They'd pray for it, but that sounds like something Her Hateableness would do. EEEEeeeeeww?). And it would all be a result of the media rejecting every benefit of any doubt that Todd's misdeeds could have been unknown, and unconsented to, by his famous wife, the Governor, Sarah Palin.

Besides, Caesar's wife must be above reproach. Especially if Caesar belongs to the GOP.

Do you think the same folks who criticized Palin for not forcing her daughter to get an abortion (because a daughter who's an unwed mother would obviously ruin Palin's vice presidential campaign), would cut her any slack for not kicking Todd to the curb? Hell, they condemned her for not getting rid of Trig just because he's going to make them feel lousy for slaying their hale and healthy babies. The same folks could be counted on to condemn her for not denouncing Todd loudly, and leaving Todd flat, rather than let him wreck her political career.

Todd didn't do any of those things.

But with that in mind, notice how every new story we hear in Detroit about Monica Conyers's misdeeds is loaded with silence about her husband, Congressman John Conyers?

Typical is a report in the Free Press today about how Monica swiped $21,000 worth of electronic toys from her City-Council Building office before she left. It wasn't even spite. She'd been stealing this stuff for years.

But as for her husband, that pharisee Inspector Javert hounding Bush and Cheney until his dying breath (Conyers was born during the Johnson administration: the first Johnson administration), he enjoys Teflon, Teflon II, and Scotchguard protection against that Republican-seeking word, "hypocrite."

The Freep story, and it isn't atypical, mentions only that Monica is "wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat from Detroit," in paragraph 20 of a story about Monica's kleptomaniacal approach to public service. The national press doesn't even know Conyers's wife pleaded guilty and faces five years in the joint for selling her votes.

Thus the blanket of immunity thrown over the Left by the media. Its advantages can't be underestimated.

Let's Give 'Em Summit to Talk About

DU was able to get its spy into the Rose Garden Thursday night, which is why we can share at least some of the high points of the world's first Beer Summit...

...[Joe Biden is finishing up a rambling story that he interrupted the others to tell].

BIDEN:“So anywho, that stuff happens every night at Mitch’s--best damn cop bar in Scranton. I drink there all the time.”

OBAMA: [Has been frowning deeply at Biden, then continues with what he'd been saying], “Now under my plan, you can still buy your favorite beer, but there’ll be a public option, to keep the big breweries honest and protect working people--”

GATES: “Quite interesting, Mr. President.”

OBAMA: “--For example, Budweiser made record profits last year.”

All look expectantly at OBAMA to hear him finish making his point. After an awkward pause, they all realize he has made his point.

CROWLEY: “Hey, professor, is that your first time trying Sam Adams?”

GATES: [Drily]. “No. It happens to be my regular brand. You may be surprised to learn that [makes finger quotes] ‘we people’ don’t all prefer malt liquor.”

CROWLEY: “I’m just asking.”

BIDEN: “Poor Sam Adams. That guy had it tough taking office after Washington.”

OBAMA: “Joe! remember what we talked about.”

BIDEN: “Sorry.”

GATES: “Anyway, the point I was trying to get across to Sergeant Crocker--”

CROWLEY: “That’s Sergeant Crowley, professor.”

GATES: “I beg your pardon. The point I was making to Officer Crowley.”

CROWLEY: “That’s Sergeant Crowley.” [Tiny arcs of Taser fire blaze in his eyes.]

OBAMA: “Now, gentlemen, go easy. We’re just some workin’ stiffs having a beer.”

CROWLEY: “You know what? You're right. I’m OK.”

GATES: “What do you mean you're OK? Like I'm not OK?”

CROWLEY: “Meaning go on with what you were saying, professor.”

GATES: “I’ll go on with your mama.”

[CROWLEY lifts the hem of his suitcoat so GATES can see his handcuffs.]

OBAMA: “Now, guys, don't forget the media's right over there with their telephotos. We’re just havin’ some beers here. Have some more peanuts.”

BIDEN: “This happens all the time at Mitch’s. Look at a guy wrong, get a barstool in the mouth. A barney every damn night! I love that place. OW!” [BIDEN grabs his ankle, then looks up at OBAMA with a hurt expression].

GATES: [Gazing abstractly, professorially,at the sky.] “In the class at Harrr-vvard University where I am a professor, I teach how the profiler assumes the guilt or innocence of another based merely on appearances.” [To CROWLEY]: “For example, when you saw that I was a black man living in America, you assumed I was a burglar.”

CROWLEY: “No I didn't, all I did was ask you for some ID. If I show up at a potential crime scene assuming guys are innocent I’ll get my head blown off.”

GATES: “But didn't it matter to you how I was dressed? How I talked? How I comported myself?”

CROWLEY: “Well in the class I teach, I tell officers we aren’t allowed to make assumptions about people based on how they’re dressed or how they talk.”

GATES: “Shoot! Do I look like a criminal to you? Do you see a man with a do-rag, droopy pants, a gangster limp . . .”

CROWLEY: “Oh, cripes, who’s the profiler here, anyway?”

GATES: “I’ll profile your mama.”

CROWLEY: “All right, sir: you're gonna need to put your hands where I can see them.” [Reflexively reaches for his missing shoulder mike to call for backup.]

BIDEN [Dreamily]: “Geez, I miss my mom.”

OBAMA: “Now, fellas. Enough! Remember what I told you about it being okay to agree to disagree? Remember that common bond we all have? Didn’t we all vote for me?”

BIDEN: “We-e-ll. . .”

CROWLEY: [Yanking on his lapels and twisting his neck]. “You have a point, Mr. President. All right, I’m good. I can agree to disagree.”

GATES: “I can agree to disagree, too, Kojak. Makes no difference to me any-hyah.”

OBAMA: “All right then. I think this has all been very productive, very healing, very teachable. In fact, why don't we just go right around the table and each tell something we’ve learned today.”

BIDEN: “I’ve learned--”

OBAMA: “Pipe down, Biden. Professor Gates?”

GATES: “I’ve learned there’s still a need for structural change if a black man is going to get justice in America.”

CROWLEY: “I’ve learned that just because a citizen talks back to me on his front porch I can’t just arrest him for disorderly conduct. I have to think of something else to arrest him for.”

OBAMA: “And I’ve learned that differences can be ironed out through dialogue, symbolic gestures, and a commitment to abandon the failed policies of the past eight years.”

BIDEN: “And I learned they add the salt to the beer nuts after they grow ‘em. Damn! Almost time for Wheel of Fortune!”

'(Let's) Free the Irbil Five!'

Obama Frees Iranian Terror Masters
The release of the Irbil Five is a continuation of a shameful policy.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

There are a few things you need to know about President Obama’s shameful release on Thursday of the “Irbil Five” — Quds Force commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds — yes, hundreds — of American soldiers and Marines.

First, of the 4,322 Americans killed in combat in Iraq since 2003, 10 percent of them (i.e., more than 400) have been murdered by a single type of weapon alone, a weapon that is supplied by Iran for the singular purpose of murdering Americans. As Steve Schippert explains at NRO’s military blog, the Tank, the weapon is “the EFP (Explosively Formed Penetrator), designed by Iran’s IRGC specifically to penetrate the armor of the M1 Abrams main battle tank and, consequently, everything else deployed in the field.” Understand: This does not mean Iran has killed only 400 Americans in Iraq. The number killed and wounded at the mullahs’ direction is far higher than that — likely multiples of that — when factoring in the IRGC’s other tactics, such as the mustering of Hezbollah-style Shiite terror cells.

Second, President Bush and our armed forces steadfastly refused demands by Iran and Iraq’s Maliki government for the release of the Irbil Five because Iran was continuing to coordinate terrorist operations against American forces in Iraq (and to aid Taliban operations against American forces in Afghanistan). Freeing the Quds operatives obviously would return the most effective, dedicated terrorist trainers to their grisly business.

Third, Obama’s decision to release the five terror-masters comes while the Iranian regime (a) is still conducting operations against Americans in Iraq, even as we are in the process of withdrawing, and (b) is clearly working to replicate its Lebanon model in Iraq: establishing a Shiite terror network, loyal to Iran, as added pressure on the pliant Maliki to understand who is boss once the Americans leave. As the New York Times reports, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, put it this way less than two weeks ago:

Iran is still supporting, funding, training surrogates who operate inside of Iraq — flat out. . . . They have not stopped. And I don’t think they will stop. I think they will continue to do that because they are also concerned, in my opinion, [about] where Iraq is headed. They want to try to gain influence here, and they will continue to do that. I think many of the attacks in Baghdad are from individuals that have been, in fact, funded or trained by the Iranians.

Fourth, President Obama’s release of the Quds terrorists is a natural continuation of his administration’s stunningly irresponsible policy of bartering terrorist prisoners for hostages. As I detailed here on June 24, Obama has already released a leader of the Iran-backed Asaib al-Haq terror network in Iraq, a jihadist who is among those responsible for the 2007 murders of five American troops in Karbala. While the release was ludicrously portrayed as an effort to further “Iraqi reconciliation” (as if that would be a valid reason to spring a terrorist who had killed Americans), it was in actuality a naïve attempt to secure the reciprocal release of five British hostages — and a predictably disastrous one: The terror network released only the corpses of two of the hostages, threatening to kill the remaining three (and who knows whether they still are alive?) unless other terror leaders were released.

Michael Ledeen has reported that the release of the Irbil Five is part of the price Iran has demanded for its release in May of the freelance journalist Roxana Saberi. Again, that’s only part of the price: Iran also has demanded the release of hundreds of its other terror facilitators in our custody. Expect to see Obama accommodate this demand, too, in the weeks ahead.

Finally, when it comes to Iran, it has become increasingly apparent that President Obama wants the mullahs to win. What you need to know is that Barack Obama is a wolf in “pragmatist” clothing: Beneath the easy smile and above-it-all manner — the “neutral” doing his best to weigh competing claims — is a radical leftist wedded to a Manichean vision that depicts American imperialism as the primary evil in the world.

You may not have wanted to addle your brain over his tutelage in Hawaii by the Communist Frank Marshall Davis, nor his tracing of Davis’s career steps to Chicago, where he seamlessly eased into the orbit of Arafat apologist Rashid Khalidi, anti-American terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and Maoist “educator” Michael Klonsky — all while imbibing 20 years’ worth of Jeremiah Wright’s Marxist “black liberation theology.” But this neo-Communist well from which Obama drew holds that the world order is a maze of injustice, racism, and repression. Its unified theory for navigating the maze is: “United States = culprit.” Its default position is that tyrants are preferable as long as they are anti-American, and that while terrorist methods may be regrettable, their root cause is always American provocation — that is, the terrorists have a point.

In Iran, it is no longer enough for a rickety regime, whose anti-American vitriol is its only vital sign, to rig the “democratic” process. This time, blatant electoral fraud was also required to mulct victory for the mullahs’ candidate. The chicanery ignited a popular revolt. But the brutal regime guessed right: The new American president would be supportive. So sympathetic is Obama to the mullahs’ grievances — so hostile to what he, like the regime, sees as America’s arrogant militarism — that he could be depended on to go as far as politics allowed to help the regime ride out the storm.

And so he has. Right now, politics will allow quite a lot: With unemployment creeping toward 10 percent, the auto industry nationalized, the stimulus revealed as history’s biggest redistribution racket (so far), and Democrats bent on heaping ruinous carbon taxes and socialized medicine atop an economy already crushed by tens of trillions in unfunded welfare-state liabilities, Iran is barely on anyone’s radar screen.

So Obama is pouring it on while his trusty media idles. When they are not looking the other way from the carnage in Iran’s streets, they are dutifully reporting — as the AP did — that the Irbil Five are mere “diplomats.” Obama frees a terrorist with the blood of American troops on his hands, and the press yawns. Senators Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl press for answers about the release of the terrorist and Obama’s abandonment of a decades-old American policy against trading terrorists for hostages, and the silence is deafening.

Except in Tehran, where the mullahs are hearing exactly what they’ve banked on hearing.

Fox News Gets Bad Case of Cronkitis

“I have a feeling that it [Osama bin Laden’s new videotape]could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I’m a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, that he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.”-- Former CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite on CNN’s Larry King Live, October 29, 2004.

Is anyone else flabbergasted at how many times Fox News has called Walter Cronkite “The Most Trusted Man in America”? I’m glad to see Debbie Schlussel hasn’t lost any time putting Cronkite back in perspective.

I hope Fox News will begin to see some pushback from their saner commentators. As a Fox watcher, I was already thoroughly sick of the wall-to-wall Michael Jackson coverage, but at least Jackson didn't betray American GIs. I anticipate a long week of surfing off of Fox every time the old footage comes on of Cronkite crying during the moon shot. (BTW, get a load of the look on Wally Schirra's face as he endures Cronkite's ego during some of the old moon coverage.)

Fox News exists largely thanks to its faithful viewers’ appreciation for a news alternative to a liberal media establishment of which Cronkite was the founding father. The leftist media’s biggest historical triumph is still having forced America to lose in Vietnam, and Cronkite was the journalistic icon of that defeat. Every time an MSNBC or New York Times reporter said we were losing in Iraq, he had to pay Cronkite a royalty.

Cronkite got the “most trusted man” handle in 1973, when he ranked ahead of the president and vice president in a national poll.
As if beating out Nixon and Agnew was a tough assignment in 1973, the year of Watergate, Agnew resigning, and the American decision to bug out of Vietnam for good, a tragic decision we’re still paying for.

At the time, Americans were OK with that decision because we’d been fed a steady diet of Cronkite’s version of what was at stake. In other words, 1973 was the lowest point of one of the lowest decades in American history. Trusting someone like Cronkite was only a part of the pathology.

Fox picking up and repeating that "most trusted" handle without context--and without challenge-makes as much sense as calling Obama “The One” because the slave media does so without apology.

As can be seen from Cronkite's stupid statement about Karl Rove quoted above, he lacked a balanced perspective, or even common sense. He also shared the fatal flaw of liberal journalism, which is the belief that the whole world agrees with his opinions, except for a few hayseed dummies (like the dopes who watch Fox News).

Is it just a desire to boost ratings that has Fox News trying to out-CBS the mainstream media's lionization of Cronkite?