Sharp Knife

"HOPELESS". "IRREVERSIBLE". "BRAIN-DEAD".

Really?

The Massachusetts Dept. of Social Services failed Haleigh. For years, neighbors warned that she was being beaten. But her torturers convinced officials that the cuts, burns and bruises were all self-inflicted.

That is, until she finally showed up at the ER, half-dead. Then, almost as if to cover up their previous neglect, DSS sought to pull the plug on her just eight days later. You can't get government to process a Cash-for-Clunkers claim in eight days--but destroying evidence of government malfeasance--eight days tops! Maybe seven!

Worse, the son of bitch who beat her was the only thing keeping Social Services from finishing the job that he started. He filed to keep her alive merely to dodge the murder rap. How bad is it when your attempted murderer is the only thing stopping the government from killing you?

Naturally, because she wasn't a precious serial killer, the runaway robes at the Massachusetts Supreme Court imposed the Death Penalty on her.

But a funny thing happened when they went into the room to starve her to death: in violation of all pertinent Social Service regulations, she was breathing on her own.

Haleigh, now 15, lives in a Boston rehabilitation hospital where she is able to perform simple tasks such as feeding herself and writing her name.

But "Death Panels" are a vicious myth. Right.

Mark Steyn:

Okay, You Don't Like the Term 'Death Panels'...so how about "life-and-death panels"?

Dany Mercado, a leukemia patient from Kitchener, Ontario, is cancer-free after getting a bone marrow transplant at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit.

Told by Canadian doctors in 2007 he couldn't have the procedure there, Mercado's family and doctor appealed to Ontario health officials, who agreed to let him have the transplant in Detroit in January 2008.

Steyn is right; strictly speaking, they're not Death Panels--every once in a while they decide to let you live. But the point is, THEY decide.

Do you know what Obama's greatest professional regret is?

Oddly, it's not the fact that he voted repeatedly to throw unwanted premature babies into the medical waste bins at Christ Hospital. No, Obama has stated that the greatest regret of his public life was voting to give Terri Schiavo one more court hearing before starving her to death. You should have been a terrorist, Terri.

And Obama can't figure out why Americans don't believe him when he quotes himself as proof.

"Hopeless". "Irreversible". Brain-dead". That's what they called Haleigh. But they would never do that to you. See, you're special. Unique, even. Precious. And one-of-a-kind.

Just like everybody else.

So what would they call you?

WHEN FIRST WE PRACTICE TO DECEIVE, DEMAGOGUE

and Democrat.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009:

The president...may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network;

The president...may order the disconnection of any Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks in the interest of national security.

Fox:

The new legislation allows the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and make a plan to respond to the danger, according to an excerpt published online -- a broad license that rights experts worry would give the president "amorphous powers" over private users. ...

"I know the threats we face," Rockefeller said in a prepared statement when the legislation was introduced. "Our enemies are real. They are sophisticated, they are determined and they will not rest."

And they read the New York Times when you leak our deepest secrets, Senator.

I, for one, am glad Sen. Rockefeller has finally decided to stop aiding and abetting our enemies for a change. Uh...you have stopped, haven't you, Senator?

cnet news:

"The language has changed but it doesn't contain any real additional limits," EFF's Tien says. "It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)...The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There's no provision for any administrative process or review. That's where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it."

Translation: If your company is deemed "critical," a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.

More:

Jena Longo, deputy communications director for [Rockefeller's] Senate Commerce committee:

The president of the United States has always had the constitutional authority, and duty, to protect the American people and direct the national response to any emergency that threatens the security and safety of the United States.

Which is why President Bush waterboarded terrorists. Which you demagogued.

The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity bill makes it clear that the president's authority includes securing our national cyber infrastructure from attack. The section of the bill that addresses this issue, applies specifically to the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster. This particular legislative language is based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks.

Which is why President Bush listened to terrorists' phone calls...which you also demgogued. And revealed to other terrorists.

To be very clear, the Rockefeller-Snowe bill will not empower a "government shutdown or takeover of the Internet" and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false. The purpose of this language is to clarify how the president directs the public-private response to a crisis, secure our economy and safeguard our financial networks, protect the American people, their privacy and civil liberties, and coordinate the government's response.

It certainly DOES empower a government shutdown of the internet. Saying it doesn't is like the president saying Socialized Medicine will be absolutely free. It's so obviously, blatantly dishonest, that it makes any further discussion of the issue impossible.

Great idea or horrible, when you can't even describe it honestly, it raises suspicions, especially for an administration that admires Hugo Chavez's seizure of all television stations.

Giving control of the internet to this Marxist gang of Chicago grifters would be like...giving control of the internet to a Marxist gang of Chicago grifters.

What could possibly go wr

AND THAT'S A LOT OF BOLSHEVIK!

Race-baiting Democrat Rep. Diane Watson of California:

"If the president, your commander-in-chief, fails, America fails."

No, it's just the opposite: when America fails, the commander-in-chief fails. That's why Democrats spent the last half-dozen years trying to engineer America's defeat in Iraq--simply to Get Bush.

"They are spreading fear and they are trying to see that the first president that looks likes me fails."

He doesn't look like you, lady; he's much cuter. Much.

If it's racism to oppose Obamacare, was it sexism when Americans rejected HillaryCare? No. It was a different "ism" both times--and Watson knows which "ism" it is:

It was just mentioned to me by our esteemed speaker, “Did anyone say anything about the Cuban health system?”

And lemme tell ya, before you say “Oh, it’s a commu–”, you need to go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place. And I want you to know, now, you can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met. [APPLAUSE]

And you know, the Cuban revolution that kicked out the wealthy, Che Guevara did that, and then, after they took over, they went out among the population to find someone who could lead this new nation, and they found…well, just leave it there (laughs), an attorney by the name of Fidel Castro…

It's not racism. It's not sexism. It's the socialism--or, for those who are no longer in denial, the communism. And by "communism", I mean of course, "communism".

We see it Watson's grotesque Fidel-worship.

We see it when this Uglo-American administration tries to re-install an impeached and unpopular Communist in Honduras against both their will and their Constitution.

In appointments such as Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, Communist.

Or Mark Lloyd, Communist Diversity Czar of the Federal Communications Commission; he praises Hugo Chavez' seizure of dozens of radio and television stations in Venezuela this year, hoping to do the same in America.

Not all ObamaCare supporters are Communists, of course--but all Communists are ObamaCare supporters.

That's because the Socialized Medicine bills are not just the five or six things that many people could agree on. Instead, they are chock-full of favors, payoffs and hidden treats for unions, trial lawyers, the Dead Baby industry, militant perverts, the Race Racketeers, La Razists, Cloners, Hemlockers, corporate whores and big Government Control freaks of all stripes.

Fred Schwarz puts it like this:

Anyone who’s old enough to remember LBJ’s civil-rights laws, and the many other reform measures enacted from the Great Society to the present, has learned two things: (1) A federal bureaucracy must either grow or die; and (2) a federal bureaucracy never dies. As the abuses that a law was designed to fight are eliminated, the enforcement apparatus does not shrink to match; instead it expands and finds new abuses — and when those run out, it starts inventing them.

So what if the Democrats’ health-care bill does not explicitly mention single payer, abortion, death panels, treatment for illegal aliens, or any of the other “myths” that “alarmists” are peddling? There’s plenty of wiggle room, with determinations to be made by boards and committees and experts and bureaucrats; and even where there’s no explicit authority to regulate, imaginative bureaucrats and their judicial enablers will conspire to create it — as has happened through the years with (for example) mandatory affirmative action, the EPA’s acquiring power to regulate carbon dioxide, and the FDA’s attempting to ban saccharin.

All the relevant laws in these cases were passed by wide bipartisan margins to address crying needs; all made great improvements at modest expense; all were enacted at a time when Americans’ experience with government intervention had been (or seemed) mostly positive; and, inevitably, all were stretched way beyond their original limits once the easy cases had been solved. So in today’s health-care fight — with a narrow partisan majority at best, trillion-dollar deficits, a nation that’s sadder but wiser about big government, and no particular crisis that needs fixing — is it any wonder that Americans don’t want the arrangement that satisfies 80 percent of them to be turned upside down, shaken to pieces, and put back together by the friendly folks in Washington?

It ain't about race, lady--unless you mean a race to the bottom. Cos' that's where Communism, Marxism and Socialism always lead, being contrary to human nature.

If you really want this president to succeed, tell him to lay off the Lenin and get back to Lincoln.

Stat.

IN WASHINGTON

where another bad idea is born. And GE brings bad things to life.

"But...it was dark in there, Judge. I only wanted to see, Your Honor!"
"This court finds the defendant Thomas A. Edison guilty of Possession of a Controlled Incandescent. You are sentenced to a term of not less than 40 nor more than 60 watts."
(The crowd:) "Legalize it! Legalize it!"

How did we go from "a thousand points of light" to a thousand pages of light bulb regulations?

The Washington Examiner:

Why did GE, founded by Thomas Edison, lobby to kill the incandescent light bulb?

The company said in 2007 it wanted to make sure it was working under a single federal efficiency standard, rather than a patchwork of state regulations. GE also touts its compact fluorescents as one of the green products in its “eco-magination” initiative.

The workers don’t buy the green arguments, pointing to the mercury gas that’s in the fluorescents...

GE is throwing 400 Americans out of work so it can pay cheap wages in China and poison Chinese workers. These are the new bulbs that if broken, require a haz-mat team to clean up. Of course, no one will follow those overbearing regulations, either.

These bulbs are being foisted on us by the Environmental/Industrial Complex to address energy use, even though there is no shortage of electricity except those caused by government and Global Warming is a fraud.

The law also betrays a Nanny-State on Steroids. A government that doesn't trust its own people to pick a light bulb certainly won't trust them on, well, anything. I've often thought that the first politician to say "the Emperor has no bulbs" could be the next president.

It's funny how a little thing like a light bulb can illuminate so many public pathologies: the unintended consequences, the incestuous government/corporate relationship, extreme job-killing enviro-wackism, the selling out of American workers, the control freak-nature of Big Government--and wasn't "going Green" supposed to create all these wonderful new jobs? Instead, bad government policy has thrown yet another 400 families into unemployment. Haven't you people helped enough already?

And to top it off, the light from the new bulb sucks!

Had enough yet?

JERSEY? WHICH EXIT?

shall we send the missile down?

Victor Davis Hanson:

"Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi Thursday asking for the homecoming to be handled with sensitivity, a spokesman said."

The triumph of the therapeutic seems complete in the country of Wellington and Nelson.

The problem is not that Brown wrote the note. The problem is there was someone there to receive it. Get mad all you want at Al Megrahi's parole, but the Real Bomber is the guy who got the letter. And I only wish the therapy were limited to Britain.

First, some history according to me. In the bad old days, Qattafi wanted to be King Kabob of Arabia (and still does), so he started doing things like sponsoring the Achille Lauro hijacking. When he bombed our G.I.s as they danced with their dates in the nightclubs of Europe, that was one crime too many for Ronald Reagan.

Our intelligence services intercepted the Libyans bragging about it both before and after the attack. Unfortunately, we didn't have a warrant so Eric Holder made us erase the tape and apologize to Libya for listening to their phone calls.

I'm kidding.

But not really.

Anyway, Reagan wouldn't have it. So he sent F-111s to say that murdering G.I.s was inappropriate behavior. Seeing the planes heading south, it was only a call from Maltese Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici that saved Gadofi. Abandoning his family including his adopted wife daughter, he fled his tent like a cockroach fleeing a floodlight, saving his own skin. Interestingly, it was also Malta where much of the Lockerbie planning was executed.

Reagan:

"I warned that there should be no place on earth where terrorists can rest and train and practice their deadly skills. I meant it. I said that we should act with others, if possible, and alone, if necessary, to insure that terrorists have no sanctuary anywhere. Tonight we have. When our citizens are abused or attacked anywhere in the world, we will respond in self-defense. If necessary, we will do it again."

If he had done it again, of course, Democrats would have called for his impeachment for violating the ban on assassination. According to liberals, dropping a bomb on one guy is a horrific crime--it's much more moral to drop a bomb on the guy if you also kill some innocent bystanders too.

As it was, the usual suspects decried Reagan's action, equating him with the terrorist Col. Quattaphi. Sheets Byrd said that it would lead to more terrorism--forgetting that the only thing leading to more terrorism was leaving Mad Dog Cuddaffi alive.

Waiting until Reagan was on the way out the door, Gutafi bombed the Pan Am Clipper over Scotland. By the time Libya was fingered as the guilty party, George H.W. Bush was president--and he dropped the ball.

TIME, 1993:

"...the real responsibility lies higher up: government officials on both sides of the Atlantic think the trail of blame leads straight into the office of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. But how can he and his regime be punished?

President Bush promised to consult with other world leaders to map out a way. French President Francois Mitterrand hinted that this time Paris might join -- even though France only last month proposed that the European Community lift existing economic sanctions against Libya. An embarrassingly few days later, a French examining magistrate accused four other Libyans, including Gaddafi's brother-in-law Abdallah Senoussi, of bombing a French DC- 10 jet that exploded over Africa nine months after the Lockerbie tragedy (death toll: 171). French intelligence suspects that both bombings were planned at the same meeting in Tripoli."

Maybe it was the Arabism of Jim Baker's Lawrence of Arabia-fantasy or the bleatings of the entire Washington Liberal Establishment. But when hundreds of your fellow citizens are killed by a Rouge-Wearing Rogue Dictator in a lovely Evening Dress with a Return Address, the proper response is not "consulting with France".

By accepting Col. Kutapphi's offer of his sacrificial lambs, his two intelligence officers to be prosecuted in his place, Bush, Sr. effectively issued Quadabbi a pardon. And once that is done, it is done. The same was true of Arafat, despite the Americans he continuously murdered. We may still be forcing 100 dollar-bills into his casket, just out of habit.

Now fast-forward to 2004. Kadifi sees Saddam soiling himself in a spiderhole, living on Mars bars and moldy hummus, and has no desire to join him. So he comes clean, or as clean as a lying dirt-bag can come.

He cuts a deal with Bush and Congress in 2008 to stop murdering, pay reparations, turn in his alloy tubes and rat out the Khan nuclear network. It stinks, but it was probably the best deal we could get, given the fact that we've ALREADY ISSUED HIM A PARDON. Hell, at this point, we're basically lucky that President Obama hasn't already awarded him a Medal of Freedom.

State has given him a visa and he's coming to the UN and will be staying at his property in Englewood, where he wants to pitch a tent. After blowing off Obama as if he were some lightweight punk from Chicago, Col. Kutafee said that America deserved the terrorist attacks it had gotten--although in fairness to the psychopath Gadaffi, that is also the official policy of this president and the Democrat Congress.

Tom Ridge said he "wondered" if re-election pressures had caused some to want the Color-Code alert levels raised in 2004 (they weren't raised). But the important thing is that Bush had made the codes irrelevant--by killing terrorists, throwing them in Gitmo, waterboarding them and listening to their phone calls. Bush wasn't re-elected because he scared Americans into it. He was re-elected because like Reagan, he scared terrorists.

But they're not nearly as scared anymore.

The last time Moamar K. Daffy set up his Bedouin Big Top, Ronald Reagan sent a heat-seeker through the flaps. This time, our Clown Car administration will already be inside, performing encores for Kaddafi's amusement in that Three Ring Circus called Obama's foreign policy.

And speaking of encores, as far as this American is concerned, it's never too late to do it again. If necessary. Or whatever.

UPDATE: Col. Qadafie obviously read this post and cancelled his Jersey camp-out. Glad I could help.

LOVE, TEDDY

“And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. ... We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave-masters".”--Ronald Reagan, 1964

Via Sweetness and Light, the head of the KGB discusses Ted Kennedy's offer of collaboration with Chairman Yuri Andropov: :

SPECIAL IMPORTANCE
Committee on State Security [KGB] of the USSR
14.05. 1983 No. 1029 Ch/OV
Moscow

Re: Senator Kennedy’s request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Comrade Yuri V. Andropov

Comrade Andropov,

On 9-10 May of this year, Senator Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant J. Tunney was in Moscow. The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Center Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.

Senator Kennedy, like other rational people, is very troubled by the current state of Soviet-American relations. Events are developing such that this relationship coupled with the general state of global affairs will make the situation even more dangerous. The main reason for this is Reagan’s belligerence, and his firm commitment to deploy new American middle range nuclear weapons within Western Europe.

The Soviets had a huge, huge advantage in these missiles; leaving it in place only made war more likely and their continuing criminal occupation of Eastern Europe more tenable. (Funny how we rarely heard the Soviets described as an "occupier", except perhaps in Germany.)

According to Kennedy, the current threat is due to the President’s refusal to engage any modification on his politics. He feels that his domestic standing has been strengthened because of the well publicized improvement of the economy: inflation has been greatly reduced, production levels are increasing as is overall business activity. For these reasons, interest rates will continue to decline. The White House has portrayed this in the media as the “success of Reaganomics.”...

Even Ted Kennedy and the Kremlin were unable to deny the success of Reaganomics, at least when speaking secretly among themselves. When you want to revive an economy, you do Reaganomics. When you want to keep an economy in crisis to reorder it, you do Obamanomics.

1. Kennedy asks Y.V. Andropov to consider inviting the senator to Moscow for a personal meeting in July of this year. The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA. ...

2. Kennedy believes that in order to influence Americans it would be important to organize in August-September of this year, televised interviews with Y.V. Andropov in the USA. A direct appeal by the General Secretary to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. The senator is convinced this would receive the maximum resonance in so far as television is the most effective method of mass media and information.

If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interview. Specifically, the president of the board of directors of ABC, Elton Raul and television columnists Walter Cronkite or Barbara Walters could visit Moscow. The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side. ...

Amazing; Kennedy wished to join in a propaganda campaign with the Soviets aimed at his own countrymen; a Radio Free Hyannis.

Kennedy is very impressed with the activities of Y.V. Andropov and other Soviet leaders, who expressed their commitment to heal international affairs, and improve mutual understandings between peoples.

Sounds like "Hope and Change: The Prequel". Kennedy thought Reagan was a warmonger and Andropov a trustworthy peacenik. But then, Kennedy thought Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were right-wingers.

The senator underscored that he eagerly awaits a reply to his appeal, the answer to which may be delivered through Tunney. ...

We await instructions.

President of the [KGB]
V. Chebrikov

The late Michael Kelly:

The last Kennedy had so few choices, really. He was born to be the baby of the family, not the patriarch; the fourth brother, not the only one; the also-Kennedy, not the President Kennedy. When he was a chubby-cheeked little boy, the family was packed with grown-ups. They all went away. Joseph junior died when Teddy was 12. Kathleen died when he was 16. Jack died when he was 31. Bobby died when he was 36. The king himself, Joe senior, died when he was 37.

“To be truly human,” Ted Kennedy once said, “is to shape your own world.” And he has, far more than most men dream of, done just that. He has made laws. He has been at the front of sweeping change, improving the lives of many people. He has helped perpetuate a dynasty. The truth is, however, the world shapes us far more than we shape it. The truth is, the forces of the world—the rules of primogeniture, the warp of genetics and the woof of environment, the killing power of bullets and the grip of alcohol—shaped Ted Kennedy and shape him still. It is the sad irony of his life that while he has wrought his will on the world at large he remains unable still to control his own life. He started out in this world dangling from strings held by his father and his brothers. They’re gone now, but Teddy dangles still, dancing to the echoes of an old and tired tune.

You can almost see the personal foibles--anybody would be messed up if their three brothers were killed by Nazis trying to conquer Europe, Communists trying to conquer Latin America and Palestinian terrorists trying to conquer Israel, a perfect trifecta of 20th-century evil.

But why then cave in to Europe-occupying, Communist sponsors of terror?

Perhaps Teddy soured on America after such a high price was extracted from his family. But Jack Kennedy would have never helped the North Vietnamese win, and he would have never, NEVER made such an offer to the Soviets. Never.

For example, as Baldilocks knows from her own family history, there is the JFK/Obama connection, via the Mboya airlifts:

The two men met at the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port, Mass., on July 26, 1960. Kennedy later said that the family was initially "reluctant" to support [Mboya's] program because of other commitments but eventually agreed to provide $100,000 because it was impossible to raise the funds elsewhere. ...

Vice President Richard M. Nixon, determined not to be outdone by his Democratic rival for the White House, persuaded the State Department to drop its long-standing refusal to fund the program. The head of the Nixon campaign "truth squad," Sen. Hugh Scott, accused Kennedy of attempting to "outbid the U.S. government" in a "misuse of tax-exempt foundation money for blatant political purposes." Kennedy responded by accusing the Nixon campaign of "the most unfair, distorted and malignant attack that I have heard in 14 years in politics." ...

The former executive director of the African-American Students Foundation, Cora Weiss, said some of the money provided by the Kennedys was used to pay off old debts and subsidize student stipends. Even though Obama Sr. arrived the previous year, he and other members of the 1959 cohort benefited indirectly from Kennedy family support.

Nixon hated the fact that those smarty-pants Eastern Kennedys could write their own check and thereby gain an electoral advantage. This resentment contributed to Watergate, where, rightly or wrongly, Nixon thought he was just getting even with all the dirty tricks played on him by the Kennedys.

But the point is, both Kennedy and Nixon liked the program. Why? Because it was an effort to exert a pro-American influence on the upcoming leadership of the Third World and STEER THEM AWAY FROM COMMUNISM! Not write them mash notes!

Unfortunately, Barack Obama, Sr. embraced Marxism before he even arrived in America and married a socialist college student, just the first two in a long, long line of influential socialists in Barack Obama's life.

There has been much talk of Obama as the Fifth Kennedy brother--but Ted rejected the anti-communism of his own brothers, while recognizing a kindred spirit in Obama.

For example, after Reagan's SDI speech, Teddy took to the senate floor and to the Soviet's delight, denounced it as "misleading Red-scare tactics and reckless Star Wars schemes."

Barack Obama is now in charge of that SDI program and wants to slash it by 15% while at the same time completely cancelling our F-22 program, practically the only government spending he has seen fit to slash. A kindred spirit, indeed.

The "fifth brother"? No way.

The "second Teddy"? Sadly, it looks like it. Buckle up.

AND WE WIN

"My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: We win and they lose. What do you think of that?"--Ronald Reagan

A slice of awesome by Fouad Ajami:

"...Mr. Obama rightly observed that the Reagan presidency was a transformational presidency in a way Clinton's wasn't. And by that Reagan precedent, that Reagan standard, the faults of the Obama presidency are laid bare. ...At the core of the Reagan mission was the recovery of the nation's esteem and self-regard. ...At no time had Ronald Reagan believed that the American covenant had failed, that America should apologize for itself in the world beyond its shores.

In contrast, there is joylessness in Mr. Obama. He is a scold, the "Yes we can!" mantra is shallow, and at any rate, it is about the coming to power of a man, and a political class, invested in its own sense of smarts and wisdom, and its right to alter the social contract of the land. ...

American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by which a leader is anointed, then the populace steps out of the way, and the anointed one puts his political program in place. In the American tradition, the "mandate of heaven" is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them. The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics.

Those protesters in those town-hall meetings have served notice that Mr. Obama's charismatic moment has passed. Once again, the belief in that American exception that set this nation apart from other lands is re-emerging. Health care is the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it is an unease with the way the verdict of the 2008 election was read by those who prevailed. It shall be seen whether the man swept into office in the moment of national panic will adjust to the nation's recovery of its self-confidence.

We absolutely, positively know without a doubt that Obama has lost the argument --by this:

The US attorney general is set to name a special prosecutor to probe CIA interrogators suspected of having violated anti-torture laws, US media said Monday.

Everytime Obama catches the 4:20 Crazy Train to Shangri LaLaLaLa-I'm Not Listening at Nutroots Central Station, you know he's losing and badly. It's code: this is how he tells his wing-nuts they won't be getting a public option, cap and trade, amnesty, surrender in Iraq, Gitmo closing or a job anytime soon. "Hey--look over there, everybody--it's Dick Cheney!"

Nevermind that Gen. Hayden says that appointing a Special Persecutor will cause other countries to love us again just like in the Clinton Era when we being attacked every year stop cooperating with us. Not to mention demoralizing the CIA. Just as Democrats cause doctors to practice defensive medicine, they cause intelligence officers to practice defensive spycraft. Message: "Don't stick your neck out for America, dummy; some politician may need a scapegoat."

But since we're going to find Hope by looking backwards in a political witch hunt, many Americans would support a Special Prosecutor involving Holder and the way terrorists were treated by our government--that is, the cop-killing FALN Puerto Rican terrorists that Holder help free in order to assist Hillary's senate campaign with ethnic voters.

Speaking of Hillary, there's a reason Alinsky-ites always go for Socialized Medicine first. And that brings us back to Ronald Reagan:

"Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last."

Now that's an unnecessary amputation.

We win!

MALICE ON MAIN STREET!

Contrary opinions at the Community Center! Various voices at the VFW! What's our democracy coming to?!!!

Well, according to Congressman Ed Perlmutter, this:

"They gin up this conflict and in some ways thuggery to try and stop stuff."

"Thugees Against Stuff!" we may be, but at least we show up:

Michael Barone:

At least one Colorado Democratic congressman has announced he won't hold town meetings on health care because people don't really know what they're talking about.

That's the spirit! Not only are you people thugs, you're ignorant thugs who aren't even worth educating!

The Colorado National Guard don't get to blow off their duties in Iraq, but Democrat Betsy Markey is AWOL--Absent Without Leadership--in Colorado.

Rep. Diana DeGette has plans for a "telephone town hall". That means she will be exchanging phone calls with Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee and when they decide what kind of health care to inflict on us, you will be informed. perhaps.

In Texas, Rep. Henry Cuellar goes even farther--literally. He's fled the country but will monitor your thoughts in an online survey from an internet cafe in Mexico. Meanwhile, Rep. Chet Edwards is tenatively thinking about considering to contemplate studying the possibility of holding a townhall in Waco--as long as you consent to a strip-search for recording devices.

Moe Lane quotes challenger Frank Guinta, mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire, who announced his own townhalls when his Congressperson refused:

“While I am very pleased that Congresswoman Shea-Porter has finally given in to the wishes of the people and will conduct a town hall on health care, I find it very unfortunate it took a media and public backlash in order to do it. Carol Shea-Porter, as we’ve been reminded over the past week, made a name for herself by attending and speaking out at town halls conducted by her predecessor. She refused to offer the same opportunity when she got into office—what a difference a few years in DC made. Our representatives in Washington should make decisions based on what is in the public’s best interest, not simply cave under unexpected and intense scrutiny.

I guess our congressmen don't want to do their jobs because they are so grossly underpaid. Maybe we should let them have their own airline like they want. And that way, they wouldn't ever have to mix with the hoi polloi again!

Funny how quickly they went from "Never let them see you sweat!" to "Never let them see you."

"HIP!..."

Mike has already done the obligatory Steyn weekend post, but here's a part that stood out to me:

Meanwhile, in Brazil, India, China, Japan, and much of continental Europe the recession has ended. In the second quarter this year, both the French and German economies grew by 0.3 percent, while the U.S. economy shrank by 1 percent. How can that be? Unlike America, France and Germany had no government stimulus worth speaking of, the Germans declining to go the Obama route on the quaint grounds that they couldn’t afford it. They did not invest in the critical signage-in-front-of-holes-in-the-road sector. And yet their recession has gone away. Of the world’s biggest economies, only the U.S., Britain, and Italy are still contracting. All three are big stimulators, though Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi can’t compete with Obama’s $800 billion porkapalooza. The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.

This was supposed to be just the very first in a long line of trillion- and multi-trillion dollar spending bills that would pass unread, unfunded and with enough unintended and untruthful consequences to make Bob Barker want to spay and nueter himself. And enough "Let's see what's behind Door #3!"-secret deals to make Monte Hall homesick for Canada.

Obama heedlessly tossed this one over his shoulder on his way to the important stuff; taking over the health care and energy sectors of the economy, to go along with the transportation and financial sectors.

But something happened on the way to the Mao Tse Tung Memorial T-Bill Wing of the U.S. Treasury; instead of the "You are getting very sleepy, clingers"-effect, it woke the people up. The dogs stopped eating the dog food. The cats stopped eating the cat food. And Sheila Jackson-Lee stopped calling Kentucky Fried Chicken on her speed-dial in mid-question.

As bad as it is, Porkulus galvanized the opposition to ChicagoCare that we see today.

That's worth something. Maybe even a trillion dollars.

IT'S A CRIME

against Human Rights when our intelligence services spy on terrorists by listening to their phone calls.

But it's "simple justice" when terrorists stalk CIA agents through their defense lawyers?

That's madness. And its coming to a court near you.

For example, Judge Urbina who ordered 17 terrorists freed inside the United States has just ruled that terrorists can talk to each other and testify for each other at their trials.

LIKE A BAD NEIGHBOR, CONGRESS IS THERE

You dirty rats:

Letters sent to 52 insurance companies by Democratic leaders demand extensive documents for an examination of ‘extensive compensation and other business practices in the health insurance industry...”

By Sept. 4, the firms are supposed to supply detailed compensation data for board members and top executives, as well as a “table listing all conferences, retreats, or other events held outside company facilities from January 1, 2007, to the present that were paid for, reimbursed, or subsidized in whole or in part by your company.”

Steyn:

You first. How come the compensations and perks of a vice-president in a private company are to be subject to greater public forensic examination than those of Dodd or Rangel?

They're supposed to be representatives not rulers. George III couldn't have got away with a letter like that.

He didn't. We wrote him a reply called "the Declaration of Independence".

And then a few years later, just to make the point, we wrote a letter to our own Congress: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Henry Waxman chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Bart Stupak, chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, signed the three-page letters.

An industry source replied when asked for comment: “This is nothing more than a taxpayer-funded fishing expedition designed to silence health plans."

No, it's nothing more than a China-funded Chicago Way protection racket designed by Double Indemnity Democrats to force insurance companies to dig their own graves before being slowly bled to death while throwing their customers into the trunk of a '78 Crown Vic.

Rush Limbaugh:

CALLER: I am a real doctor, not a fake one (chuckles) and I've been watching this very closely, trying to understand the public option and everything. My analysis has been basically what the writers in Bloomberg wrote, but today when I heard that Henry Waxman basically requested records over 50 insurance companies, it just struck me. If this is all about competition and increasing competition, how in the world can they get proprietary knowledge from their competitors?

RUSH: Well, that's an excellent point. It really is, although I don't think that's what Waxman is doing because I don't think he cares. He knows they can't compete with him.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: But it's still an excellent point. Here you have the federal government -- and a lot of people are more frightened of their government today than they have ever been -- and here Henry Waxman is sending out letters to these insurance companies demanding every bit of information about how they run their business, how the executives are compensated. I want to see in the Constitution where they have that right. The insurance companies are under indictment only because the Democrat Party has made the insurance industry its latest demon, its latest villain. But I don't know that any federal regulatory agency is investigating the insurance industry as a whole for unfair practices and so forth. So here you have this little power hungry guy sending out these threatening letters. This is all about scaring these people. This is about getting them to go along with the plan.

This is about forcing them by virtue of fear and intimidation. This is the way they did it in Russia, the Soviet Union. This is the way of the world in most places: harassment, intimidation, extortion. But your point is doubly powerful. If they really do mean this business about "we just want to provide a public option because we want more competition," then they've got no business being able to see all the proprietary information of their competitors. So no matter how you look at this, it stinks. Once again: Get out of the way, let 'em do this. They're showing themselves finally for who and what they are, and they're paying the price for it, big time, and they don't care. It doesn't matter, as long as they get as much as they can ramrod through before 2010 in those elections. They're governing against the will of the people. They have chosen not only to demonize the American insurance industry, they are now demonizing over half the American people. This is who they are.

EXCEPT THE LADY ON YOUR ARM

Did you think you were alone in being called "unpatriotic" by your own representatives?

Well, it happened to Margaret Thatcher, too. And for the exact same reasons it happened to you:

Some of them, for example, suggested that I criticised Britain when I was overseas. They are wrong. It wasn't Britain I was criticising. It was Socialism. (Applause).

And I will go on criticising Socialism, and opposing Socialism because it is bad for Britain--and Britain and Socialism are not the same thing. As long as I have health and strength, they never will be. (Applause).

In fact, you may be amazed by how many of the battles she fought are the very same battles we find ourselves fighting again today...eternal vigilance is still the price of freedom. Have a look:

"They told us that the Social Contract would solve everything. But now everyone can see that the so-called contract was a fraud--a fraud for which the people of this country have had to pay a very high price. It is the Labour Government whose policies are forcing unemployment higher than it need have been—thousands more men and women lose their jobs every day.

There are going to be men and women many of them youngsters straight out of school—who will be without a job this winter because Socialist Ministers spent last year attacking us, instead of attacking inflation.

It's the Labour Government that have brought us record peace-time taxation. They've got the usual Socialist disease—they've run out of other people's money. (Laughter).

And it's the Labour Government that have pushed public spending to record levels. And how've they done it? By borrowing, and borrowing and borrowing.

Never in the field of human credit has so much been owed. (Laughter).

There are voices that seem anxious not to overcome our economic difficulties, but to exploit them, to destroy the free enterprise society and put a Marxist system in its place.

What we face today is not a crisis of capitalism, but of Socialism. No country can flourish if its economic and social life is dominated by nationalisation and state control. The cause of our shortcomings does not therefore lie in private enterprise. Our problem is not that we have too little socialism. It is that we have too much.

We are witnessing a deliberate attack on our values, a deliberate attack on those who wish to promote merit and excellence, a deliberate attack on our heritage and great past. (Applause). And there are those who gnaw away at our national self-respect, rewriting British history as centuries of unrelieved gloom, oppression and failure. As days of hopelessness—not Days of Hope.

Blatant tactics of intimidation, designed to undermine the fundamental beliefs and values of every student. Tactics pursued by people who are the first to insist on their own civil rights while seeking to deny them to the rest of us. We must not be bullied and brainwashed out of our beliefs. (Applause).

A man's right to work as he will to spend what he earns to own property to have the State as servant and not as master these are the British inheritance.

They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend. (Applause). But we want a free economy, not only because it guarantees our liberties, but also because it is the best way of creating wealth and prosperity for the whole country.

The way to recovery is through profits. Good profits today, leading to high investment, well-paid jobs and a better standard of living tomorrow. (Applause). No profits mean no investment, and a dying industry geared to yesterday's world.

The trouble here is that for years the Labour Party have made people feel that profits are guilty-unless proved innocent. But when I visit factories and businesses I do not find that those who actually work in them are against profits. On the contrary, they want to work for a prosperous concern. With a future—their future. (Applause).

The Labour Government have pursued a disastrous vendetta against small businesses and the self-employed. We will reverse their damaging policies.

We are now seeing the full consequences of nearly twenty months of Labour Government. They have done the wrong things at the wrong time in the wrong way. They have been a disaster for this country.

Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a State computer. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise. The spirit of envy can destroy. It can never build.

We believe that you become a responsible citizen by making decisions yourself, not by having them made for you. But they are made for you under Labour all right.

The first duty of Government is to uphold the law. If it tries to bob and weave and duck around that duty when its inconvenient, if government does that, then so will the governed, and then nothing is safe--not home, not liberty, not life itself."

No, the lady's not for turning. The turn, at last, is ours.

"Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to dream -- to follow your dream or stick to your conscience, even if you're the only one in a sea of doubters."--Ronald Reagan

OUR EVIL UMPIRES STRIKE OUT AGAIN

The latest smashing good news in Missile Defense from Closing Velocity:

While it keeps racking up successful intercepts like clockwork, missile defense will never work in the real world, critics crow, therefore we should scrap it ASAP.

That all changes today.

With a bombshell article in Aviation Week, the stool is kicked out from under this perennial argument against missile defense. AW's Amy Butler reveals stunning new information about a recent missile defense test and just how operationally realistic it was.

By the way, the author notes in his sidebar that Missle Defense has a public approval rating of 87%, up there with Santa Claus and Mom's apple pie.

Despite that, earlier this year the administration announced plans to cut the program by 15%. Here's what I wrote at the time; "Reagan in Reverse":

While President Reagan saw SDI as a way to enable us to safely ban nuclear weapons, Obama wants to ban both nuclear weapons AND the SDI program.

Obama keeps falsely calling SDI “unproven”. And he’s bought into the Russian’s terms: a shield is a “weapon”, “aimed” at Russia. Is a bulllet-proof vest a weapon? Obama thinks weapons in the hands of rogue nations make us unsafe–but he thinks America IS a rogue nation.

Even when Reagan announced SDI, critics said he was “weaponizing space”. Obama seems to have adopted this attitude. In fact, Reagan was DE-weaponizing space. Reagan was not able to reach zero–but by defeating the Soviets, he made drastic reductions possible. ...

Obama is proposing cuts–real cuts–in defense spending. SDI is being cut 15% while $6 Billion is headed to pay ObamaCorps “volunteers”. Nevermind that by definition, if they’re being paid, they’re not volunteers.

Didn’t Obama Democrats say “our army is broken” and “stretched to the breaking point”? And now they’re slashing it? ...

Don’t be fooled: Reagan and Obama both wanted an end to nukes. But Ronald Reagan believed in “Peace Through Strength”, while Obama believes in “Strength through Peace”.

That is, Obama believes America is strongest when we are pacifist and weak, when in fact, that has always invited war. That is the lesson of the Peace Fever of the Thirties.

As Mike noted below, liberals scoffed at the word "evil" when Reagan used it against gulag administrators, but now embrace it to describe American voters. Why, it's almost as if they're questioning someone's patriotism!

They are wrong now, but they were also wrong at the time to scoff at the "Evil Empire" language Reagan used. The State Department hated it so much, they kept removing it from the speech--and Reagan kept on penciling it right back in.

We needed to hear it. We needed the moral clarity. Our children needed to hear it. Liberals needed to hear it. Our allies needed to hear it. Wavering Third World governments needed to hear it. Dissidents and prisoners needed to hear it. And most of all the Soviets themselves needed to hear it. They recognized themselves in the indictment. And even those who didn't at least knew that they weren't going to put anything past Reagan. He had their number.

The cartoon of Reagan as a warmonger is perfectly upside-down. He was an anti-nuker in 1945! He said he would have gladly marched in the Freeze Movement, but he knew that it would give the lying, cheating, stealing, occupying Communists a permanent and decisive advantage, thus making disarmament LESS likely and making war MORE likely.

A "warmonger"? By calling "evil" evil, Ronald Reagan was able to remove more nuclear weapons from the face of the earth than any other person who has ever lived. But he did it from a position of strength and moral clarity, not from self-imposed weakness inside a moral fog.

And therein lies all the difference in the world between President Reagan and President Reagan-in-Reverse.

WHY ON EARTH WOULD WE DO THIS? WHY?

Denis Boyles on SurrenderCare:

July 2003 had been miserable. On the 28th, Dr. Patrick Pelloux, the president of France’s association of emergency-room doctors, took a look at the long-range forecast, the number of health-care workers who would be off-duty, and the number of doctors and nurses left behind who were restricted by law from working more than 35 hours. He issued a warning saying the number of available hospital beds would be reduced by “25 to 30 percent” — not enough to meet an emergency situation. President Jacques Chirac and the government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, including Health Minister Jean-François Mattei, disregarded the warning — and left town.

Right on time, on August 1, Météo-France warned of a canicule — a heatwave, one that most of France only learned about sitting in traffic jams in their Peugeots on the sweltering roads to the beach. By August 4, the temperature in parts of the country had reached 40° C (104° F), and more than 300 people — almost all of whom were elderly and alone — had died. [...]

In some hospital rooms, even those filled with unattended elderly people, temperatures reached 120° F. [...]

Health minister Mattei responded furiously from his vacation getaway, issuing a statement saying the death rate was “comparable to previous years, except in certain facilities and one or two départments in the Île-de-France.” [...]

By now, the actual death toll was more than 10,000. Raffarin, at his villa in the south of France, held a casual press conference and denounced “partisan politics.” [...]

The next day, Mattei announced that 3,000 people had died from the canicule so far. In fact, the death toll had already passed 12,000. Aides to Chirac, who had been silent so far, reassured the nation that the président was “closely following the situation.” [...]

Three days later, Mattei said he had investigated the matter and found that he had done nothing wrong. On August 20, Raffarin said the government would try hard to figure out how many people had died, and promised to have official figures within a month. [...]

It took almost six months before the French government admitted 15,000 of their most vulnerable citizens died in the heat wave. The bold, new plan promised by Chirac? The government would make sure every hospital has one air-conditioned room. And next time there’s a canicule, the government promised, the elderly will be told to avoid going to the hospital and instead go to the movies.

Many of those elderly had survived two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Gestapo, post-war deprivation, Algeria, Vietnam, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Jerry Lewis. But they couldn't survive Socialized Medicine. And they were all alone because "everybody knows" that it's the government job. The government will take care of it.

There are two lessons here, and one of them is call your parents today.

THEY WARNED ME

that if I voted for Palin, we would get an administration that gives billions to giant oil corporations to exploit the oil deposits near our precious, fragile coastlines...and they were right!

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a “preliminary commitment” letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount.

How's your memory? It seems like ages now, but it was really only one short year ago...

This election could be the most important of our lifetime. When it comes to...the very future of our planet, the choices we make in November will shape the next decade, if not the century. And central to all of these major challenges is the question of what we will do about our addiction to foreign oil.

Without a doubt, this addiction is one of the most dangerous and urgent threats this nation has ever faced – from the rising oceans and record drought and spreading famine that could engulf our planet.

It's also a threat that goes to the very heart of who we are as a nation, and who we will be. Will we be the generation that leaves our children a planet in decline, or a world that is clean, and safe, and thriving?

We've heard talk about curbing the use of fossil fuels in State of the Union addresses since the oil embargo of 1973.

Back then, we imported about a third of our oil. Now, we import more than half. Back then, global warming was the theory of a few scientists. Now, it is a fact that is melting our glaciers and setting off dangerous weather patterns as we speak.

George Bush's own Energy Department has said that if we opened up new areas to drilling today, we wouldn't see a single drop of oil for seven years. Seven years. And Senator McCain knows that if we opened up and drilled on every single square inch of our land and our shores, we would still find only three percent of the world's oil reserves. Three percent for a country that uses 25% of the world's oil. Even Texas oilman Boone Pickens, who's calling for major new investments in alternative energy, has said, “this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of.”

For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we must end the age of oil in our time.

In ten years, we will eliminate the need for oil from the entire Middle East and Venezuela. To do this, we will invest $150 billion over the next ten years and leverage billions more in private capital to build a new energy economy that harnesses American energy and creates five million new American jobs.

So we will direct... billions in loans and capital to entrepreneurs who are willing to create clean energy businesses and clean energy jobs right here in America.

Senator McCain sees more drilling as the answer to all of our energy problems, and he's found a receptive audience in the very same oil companies that have blocked our progress for so long. In fact, he raised more than one million dollars from big oil just last month, most of which came after he announced his plan for offshore drilling in a room full of cheering oil executives.

We can watch helplessly as the price of gas rises and falls because of some foreign crisis we have no control over, and uncover every single barrel of oil buried beneath this country only to realize that we don't have enough for a few years, let alone a century. We can watch other countries create the industries and the jobs that will fuel our future, and leave our children a planet that grows more dangerous and unlivable by the day. Or we can choose another future.

We can watch as millions of new jobs with good pay and good benefits are created for American workers, and we can take pride as the technologies, and discoveries, and industries of the future flourish in the United States of America. We can lead the world, secure our nation, and meet our moral obligations to future generations.

I ask you to join me, in November and in the years to come, to ensure that we will not only control our own energy, but once again control our own destiny, and forge a new and better future for the country that we love.

And evidently, that country is Brazil.

Where did our "the fragile wilderness" go? Were we cured of our "oil addiction"? What happened to "We can't drill our way out of this!"? What about "the rising sea levels"? The "dangerous and unlivable planet"? "Creating 5 million jobs in America!"? "Cheering oil executives"?

As they say in Brazil "Hurra! Hurra! Hurra!"

Gilda Radner as "Emily Latella" sums up Obama's Energy Policy well:

"Nevermind."

Or as they say, "Every one of this guy's promises comes with an expiration date."

And a can of 30 weight.

UPDATE: Ah--now it all makes $en$e: "Is it a coincidence that Obama backer George Soros repositioned himself in Petrobras to get dividends just a few days before Obama committed $2 billion in loans and guarantees for Petrobras’ offshore operations?"

WHICH DOESN'T EXIST

"But without this procedure, I'll be dead before Christmas."

You try to keep the anger out of your voice. The last thing you want to do is offend them. But the politicians promised you—they promised everyone—there would never be panels like this. They made fun of anyone who said there would. "What do they think we're going to do? Pull the plug on grandma?" they chuckled. The media ran news stories calling all rumors of such things "false" or "misleading." But of course by then the media had become apologists for the state rather than watchdogs for the people. [...]

"I'm only 62."

He smiles politely.

"Look, it's not just about me," you argue desperately. "My daughter's engaged to get married next year. She'll be heartbroken if I'm not there for it."

"Maybe you should have thought of that before you put on so much weight," says the medical officer. "I mean, you people have been told time and again . . ."

But the chairwoman is uncomfortable with his censorious tone and cuts him off, saying more gently, "Perhaps your daughter could move the wedding up a little."

Read it.

"THE DEBATE IS OVER."--AL GORE

Yes, it is--and you lost, Al.

Robert Tracinski and Tom Minchin:

In a potential preview for America, the Australian Senate has just defeated that country's version of cap-and-trade by a vote of 42-30. Most of the overseas coverage of this event, however, has missed the most interesting feature of the defeat. The BBC report, for example, claims that the bill was blocked because "opposition senators...feared the legislation would harm the country's mining sector."

In fact, the bill was defeated because there is now serious disagreement in Australia on the very existence of human-caused global warming.

The influential University of Adelaide geologist and author Ian Plimer:

"In geological time, there have been six major ice ages. During five of these six, the CO2 content [of the atmosphere] was higher than now, and for two of these six, the CO2 content has been up to 1,000 times higher than now. If high atmospheric CO2 drives warming, then how could there be an ice age during times of high CO2? Furthermore, two of these six ice ages were at sea level at the equator. [...]

"The difficulty for politicians is that science is now politicized in the bureaucracy, universities, and research institutes and in many ways is forced to arrive at a predestined conclusion.... Most scientists are dependent upon governments for research funding, most universities have a large proportion of funding for climate research, and to challenge the popular paradigm is to guarantee [career] suicide. It is really only retired scientists or those few like me who are fearlessly independent who dare to question the popular paradigm [and] put up with the incessant ad hominem attacks...."

The toothpaste is out of the tube, the train has left the station, the horse is out of the barn, the dogs are no longer eating the dogfood...and Global Warming is being outed for the ruthless, statist fraud that it is.

It's a good day for science and a good day for freedom. And G'day to you!

Terrorists Get Appeals, Obamacare Patients Don’t

An unchecked executive tosses Americans into a legal black hole.

By Andrew C. McCarthy:

All that mattered for Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democrats’ amen corner in the media was that the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress had slammed the courthouse door. [...]

Democrats insisted Republicans were “betraying our values.” To deprive these litigants of basic legal rights, we were told, was to run roughshod over constitutional checks and balances. Without federal district judges overseeing the commander-in-chief’s conduct of war, George W. Bush would have an intolerable “blank check.” The people trying to kill us would be lost in a “legal black hole,” an unconscionable violation of the rule of law.

Perusing the Democrats’ proposal to usurp the health-care industry, one-sixth of what used to be known as the private sector, that history rushes back to mind. Pardon me if I can’t help thinking: This sure looks an awful lot like a legal black hole.

Tucked into several pages of this epic monstrosity are various “limitation on review” provisions. They are designed to vest President Obama with unilateral, non-appealable control over available treatments and their costs. That is, Americans will have no recourse to challenge errant or capricious executive-branch decisions in the courts. [...]

To what conditions or procedures does this rule apply? As Duke professor John David Lewis notes, it’s any “condition or procedure selected by the Secretary.” As if that weren’t bad enough: The bill states that “there shall be no administrative or judicial review” of the readmissions measures. It’s the Sebelius way or the highway. [...]

Remember the state of play when Democrats demanded wartime judicial rights for terrorists? Throughout two-plus centuries of warfare, the millions of alien enemy combatants captured by U.S. forces had never had the privilege of access to our courts. Simply to say aloud that wartime enemies had a right to haul into the American people’s courts the government officials waging a war authorized by the American people’s elected representatives was to illustrate the absurdity of the proposition. [...]

None of that mattered a whit to Barack Obama & Co. When it came to al-Qaeda, nothing but the best would do.

As for you, good luck with HHS.

UPDATE: More on the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, the Death Panel already funded to the tune of $1.1 Billion in the Porkulus Bill:

I think saying the government will be "deciding whether a person's life is worth living" is about more than "cut[ting] off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure" — the narrow definition of death panels used by the New York Times (as Ashby recounts). It's about foreclosing care to the treatable — based on some government formula — such that they wither and die before their time. For all these years, the Left has told us we must butt out of end-of-life decisions because they are so intensely personal; turns out they're only intensely personal if you're decision is to die — if you want to live, that's up to the bureaucrats.

"Europe can't fight its way out of a paper bag, because it spends half its money propping up its paper bag industry, and the other half on bureaucracies regulating the strength and thickness of paper bags. Europe can only be the equal of American power with the willing cooperation of a president who stays up late at night wondering whether chain-smoking leftists in cafes on another continent might greet his next state visit with giant mocking puppets."--James Lileks

GOOD, GUV

Politico:

“He went around the country last fall promising ‘change we can believe in,’ but now we see it’s about changing what we believe in.”

“Medicaid is essentially bankrupt, Medicare is essentially bankrupt, why the heck would we give the federal government another entitlement program to manage?”

“The only thing growing faster than the federal deficit and debt is Chris Matthews’ man crush on Obama.”

I like this guy.

(Hat-tip: Babalu)

YOU BE THE JUDGE

and the legislature. Also the ACLU.


Heather Mac Donald on Chief Bratton, "Broken Windows" and Three Strikes:

Merely questioning the homeless for littering, selling illegal merchandise, and jaywalking, they said, constituted illegal harassment of the poor. UCLA law professor Gary Blasi charged the LAPD with trying to “ethnically cleanse” downtown to make way for gentrification. A hostile federal judiciary lapped up every preposterous charge the advocates leveled against the police, but the LAPD continued enforcing public-order laws on Skid Row, producing some of the largest crime drops in Los Angeles and bringing a modicum of sanity to streets that had resembled bedlam just five years earlier. The beneficiaries of this crime drop included elderly residents of the neighborhood SROs, vagrants seeking to get clean and turn their lives around, and low-income workers in the area’s intrepid small wholesalers and factories, who no longer found themselves victimized by psychotic drug users as a matter of course.

And now Charles Samuel will be taken off the streets and brought to justice [for murder], thanks to two Skid Row officers’ willingness to ignore ACLU propaganda and accost a vagrant drinking in public.

Three Carter appointees, U.S. District Judges Thelton Henderson and Lawrence Karlton, and U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt just ordered the California legislature to spend millions on prison conditions. Otherwise, they'll release a 47,000-man crime wave on the citizens of California.

Trouble is, the legislature has spent all the money already.

I don't want to say that they've recklessly spent all of this generation's money and are now greedily working on future generation's, but Mr. Spacely just fired George Jetson from Spacely Sprockets because of their tax increases. California just told the Federation that the Enterprise must be put in drydock because it cannot afford any more Dilithium Crystals. Instead, Spock and Kirk will be issued a bus pass to boldly go bankrupt.

It's not just about the debt; California's Democrats have wasted so much money so foolishly for so long that they are actually putting their own citizens in danger with their extreme profligacy and extremist policies.

Now this, from the LA Times via Overlawyered:

In the last few months alone, the courts added more than a billion dollars to the state's deficit by declaring illegal reductions in healthcare services, redevelopment agency funds and transportation spending. Another ruling threatens to deprive California of all its federal stimulus money if the state does not rescind a cut to the salaries of home healthcare workers. [...]

"We are seeing more lawsuits and more victories by the groups filing them," said Bob Hertzberg, a former Assembly speaker who now is chairman of California Forward, a think tank focused on reforming the budget process. "They don't want to compromise. . . . It's easier to hire lawyers than lobbyists, and you probably get better outcomes."

So that government by lawyer might not perish from the earth.

Do you have a lobbyist? You're supposed to; your elected representatives are supposed to be your lobbyist. Did you know that? It seems quaint, almost delusional to even say such a thing today.

Had enough yet, voters?

IF BY "MAN"

you mean "the government".

Sean Hannity:

And joining me live from California is Congressman Devin Nunes and comedian and activist Paul Rodriguez.

Guys, I don't know if we can get a shot. It looks like you have over a thousand people there. Is that right?

PAUL RODRIGUEZ, COMEDIAN/ACTIVIST: Well over a thousand, Sean. This is a testament of your message is getting to these people. They've been out here for hours. The only water this field has seen is our sweat. But it's more than we've gotten from the government.

HANNITY: Well, Paul, we have had you on about this before. I want you to tell the entire story, because it's almost unfathomable. Literally, farms are drying up.

RODRIGUEZ: People don't believe it.

HANNITY: Go ahead, tell them. Tell everybody.

RODRIGUEZ: Well, the problem is the environmental laws, they're not flexible at all. The very judge that pushed this order to cut off the water said that there was no swivel room to make accommodations for human beings. You know, this fish apparently takes high priority. All the water has been held back.

And we're left with nothing but — right where we're at, this used to be an almond orchard. We grew some of the sweetest almonds ever. Now it's firewood. Do you want some? Nobody believes that how I got involved--my mother is from here.

Rep. Devin Nunes:

A lot of the "Okies" settled in the San Joaquin Valley. In the decades that followed, state and federal officials built dams and other irrigation projects that helped turn the valley into some of the world's richest farmland.

But today the San Joaquin Valley is being transformed into a dust bowl. Hundreds of thousands of acres are fallow, while almond and plum trees are being left to die in the scorching sun. Tens of thousands of people have been tossed out of work—the town of Mendota alone has an unemployment rate of about 40%—and the lines for food donations stretch down streets. The reason? There isn't enough water to go around this year, and the Obama administration is drawing up new reasons to divert more of it from farms and people and into the San Francisco Bay.

Forty thousand people thrown out of work and on to the public dole, even though California desperately needs productive taxpayers. Entire communities, communities who survived the Great Depression now see their traditions, their work ethic and their property values discarded like so much trash by their own government. An area the size of Rhode Island turned into a Dustbowl by Design--and in the name of the environment!

The judges, legislators, lawyers and enviromental wackos all have good jobs. with benefits. Meanwhile, their victims are in line down at the food bank. Weren’t some of Milosevic’s indictments for doing stuff like this? It’s like the Enviro-version of Law vs. Order: Special Victims Unit. CSI: Mendota. If this is “law”, why does it feel like “crime”?

This is the mad "Carp Before Carpenters" eco-extremist ideology of today's Democrats.
And they want to run everyone's Health Care? They couldn't run a lemonade stand--they'd kill all the lemon trees for starters.

Had enough yet?

JAMA:

Quality-adjusted life-years have been used in economic analyses as a measure of health outcomes, one that reflects both lives saved and patients' valuations of quality of life in alternative health states. The concept of "cost per quality adjusted life year" as a guideline for resource allocation is founded on six ethical assumptions: quality of life can be accurately measured and used, utilitarianism is acceptable, equity and efficiency are compatible, projections of community preferences can substitute for individual preferences, the old have less "capacity to benefit" than the young, and physicians will not use quality-adjusted life-years as clinical maxims. Quality-adjusted life-years signal two shifts in the locus of control and the nature of the clinical encounter: first, formal expressions of community preferences and societal usefulness would counterbalance patient autonomy, and second, formal tools of resource allocation and applied decision analysis would counterbalance the use of clinical judgment. These shifts reflect and reinforce a new financial ethos in medical decision making. Presently using quality-adjusted life-years for health policy decisions is problematic and speculative; using quality-adjusted life-years at the bedside is dangerous.

American Thinker:

The AP is technically correct in stating that end-of-life counseling is not the same as a death panel. The New York Times is also correct to point out that the health care bill contains no provision setting up such a panel.

What both outlets fail to point out is that the panel already exists.

H.R. 1 (more commonly known as the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, even more commonly known as the Stimulus Bill and aptly dubbed the Porkulus Bill) contains a whopping $1.1 billion to fund the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The Council is the brain child of former Health and Human Services Secretary Nominee Tom Daschle. Before the Porkulus Bill passed, Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant governor of New York, wrote in detail about the Council's purpose.

Daschle's stated purpose (and therefore President Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to empower an unelected bureaucracy to make the hard decisions about health care rationing that elected politicians are politically unable to make. The end result is to slow costly medical advancement and consumption. Daschle argues that Americans ought to be more like Europeans who passively accept "hopeless diagnoses."

McCaughey goes on to explain:

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.

Mark Steyn:

I had an elderly British visitor this month who's had a recurring problem with her left hand. At one point it swelled up alarmingly, and so we took her to Emergency. They did a CT scan, X-rays, blood samples, the works. In two hours at a small, rural, undistinguished, no-frills hospital in northern New Hampshire, this lady got more tests than she's had in the past decade in Britain – even though she goes to see her doctor once a month. He listens sympathetically, tells her old age often involves adjusting to the loss of mobility, and then advises her to take the British version of Tylenol and rest up. Anything else would use up those valuable "resources." So, in two hours in New Hampshire, she got tested and diagnosed (with gout) and prescribed something to deal with it. It's the difference between health "care" (i.e., going to the doctor's every month to no purpose) and health treatment – and on the latter America is the best in the world.

President Barack Obama has wondered whether this is a "sustainable model." But, from your point of view, what counts is not whether the model's sustainable but whether you are.

MNN PRESENTS "THE GET EVENING NEWS"

A Servicing of Manufactured News(tm) Network***(Moosedew, Montana) Pres. Obama has embarked on a tour of the Mountain West to shore up support for his health care debacle.

"We are held hostage, at any given moment by health insurance companies that deny coverage, or drop coverage, or charge fees that people can't afford at a time when they desperately need care," Obama said. "Such as a $50,000 foot amputation or a gratuitous tonsillectomy."

"However, unlike the previous administration, it is my policy to negotiate with all hostage-takers. And let me urge all bigoted Americans not to lash out in anger against the Gekko-Americans, the Good Hands Community or the Indemnified Imams practicing their Insurance of Peace," said Obama.

"We just feel that it is much better to have the Government ration your health care than to have insurance companies ration your care," Obama continued. "After all, if an insurance company denies you care, you can get a different company. But if your government denies you care, you can't get a different government. We can make rationing stick. We've got police, courts, legislatures and bureaucracies and we can tax you, fine you, lock you up and confiscate your property in ways private companies can only dream of. We can even stop you from leaving the country because we control the borders--at least on the way out."

***(New Hajib, Connecticut) Yale University Press has censored "The Cartoons that Shook the World", a book on the recent controversial Danish Mohammad cartoons. Even historical images of Mohammad by famous Western artists were banned from the book.

Yale has agreed to change the book's title to either "Allah and Man at Yale" or "The Cartoons that Shook the World and Made Us Pee Our Pants So Please Don't Hurt Us But, Hey, Wouldn't It Be Nice If King Abdullah Wanted to Endow a New Chair at Yale?"

***(Washington, D.C.) Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has ordered the reconstitution of HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee, the bane of American Communists in the 1950's.

"I've always wanted to say "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Republican Party?"," gushed a plainly excited Pelosi. "In the old days, they foolishly thought that wanting your own country to lose the Cold War or lose in Vietnam was "un-American"," said Pelosi "but today we know that wanting your country to lose its wars is very patriotic. However, disagreeing with me on health care is -the very definition of 'un-American'."

"That whole "Axis of Evil"-thing was a joke," chimed in Harry Reid, "but the Axis of Evil-Mongers is very real."

Pelosi added that any health care bill should also cover illegal aliens, or as she calls them, "Americans".

***(Potemkin Falls, Colorado) Barack Obama announced his latest Trillion-Dollar initiative today: Strawman Reform.

"Some opponents of reform say that the same old tired Strawmen of yesterday are up to the job. We didn't ask for these Strawmen, but we inherited them from the previous administration. The alternative, they say, is to do nothing, just stuff a little more straw into the status quo. So let me be clear; we can’t get distracted by the special interests of Big Straw. As you know, I’ve consistently said that even though this Straw Plan will cost a trillion dollars, it will save us money in the long run through Preventative Blame. Because with the thoughts I've been thinkin', I could be another Lincoln if I had someone to blame."

***(St. Louis, Missouri) Protestor Kenny Gladney has been invited to the White House for beers.

Gladney has been asked by the White House to serve beers to the president and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. while the two of them continue their Learnable Moment Conversation about the politicized use of force directed against Mr. Gates.

***(Mnemonic, Nigeria) Blithely comparing America to a Third World hell-hole that has never had a free and fair election, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton told Nigerians that “In 2000, our presidential election came down to one state where the brother of the man running for President was the governor of the state. So we have our problems too."

"In fact, speaking of nepotism and corruption, we once had an election in which a president pardoned a bunch of terrorists in order to gain ethnic votes for his wife's senate race.”

Clinton's next scheduled corrupt nepotism stop is Kenya, where Pres. Obama once campaigned for his cousin, Communist Raila Odinga, who went on a ethnic-cleansing terror spree until he was declared a winner.

Through a translator, a student also asked Sec. Clinton what Eleanor Roosevelt thought. Hillary replied that while she wouldn't be channeling her husband despite the fact that the bastard was being hailed around the globe for his diplomatic coup in North Korea while she was stuck in this backwater with no indoor plumbing, she would be channeling Mrs. Roosevelt later.

***(Ala Mode, Texas) Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee explains why your lying eyes think she's ignoring a voter in mid-question to talk on the phone: "It appears on the video — maybe it's a doctored video — but how I explain it is this: First of all, I take calls from my constituents, but that was not a call that I took. I dialed the hotline number to get a better answer."

"Also, my dog ate my homework and I was calling a pet ambulance. And speaking of "doctored", I've got a plan to address the shortage of doctors; I'll send my husband's students to your bedside and they'll pretend to be doctors...problem cured!"

ON DR. EMANUEL'$ "PRIORITY CURVE"

"It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance."--Pres. Barack O'Sanger

Via Just One Minute:

Obama Says Grandmother’s Hip Replacement Raises Cost Questions

April 29 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said his grandmother’s hip-replacement surgery during the final weeks of her life made him wonder whether expensive procedures for the terminally ill reflect a “sustainable model” for health care. [....]

"Sustainable" for who? "Billions for ACORN, a Cane for Grandma!"

“I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost,” Obama said in the interview. “I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother."

Well, hey, Big Spender! That's great...except "paying out of pocket" would be illegal under your plan.

Gov. Palin:

Is this all just a “rumor” to be “disposed of”, as President Obama says? Not according to Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz, Chairman of the New York State Senate Aging Committee, who writes:

"Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives.... It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen ... should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign."

Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens....An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.”

Health Care for the strong and healthy, those in the prime of life...where have I heard that philosophy before...? Oh yeah; Jonah Goldberg:

“More children from the fit, less from the unfit...” [Margaret Sanger] frankly wrote in her 1922 book The Pivot of Civilization. (The book featured an introduction by [H.G.] Wells, in which he proclaimed, “We want fewer and better children...and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict on us.” [...]

Of course, orthodox eugenics also aimed at the “feebleminded” and “useless bread gobblers” — which included everyone from the mentally retarded to an uneducated and malnourished underclass to recidivist criminals. When it comes to today’s “feebleminded,” influential voices on the left now advocate the killing of “defectives” at the beginning of life and at the end of life. Chief among them is Peter Singer, widely hailed as the most important living philosopher and the world’s leading ethicist. Professor Singer, who teaches at Princeton, argues that unwanted or disabled babies should be killed in the name of “compassion.” He also argues that the elderly and other drags on society should be put down when their lives are no longer worth living.

Singer doesn’t hide behind code words and euphemisms in his belief that killing babies isn’t always wrong, as one can deduce from his essay titled “Killing Babies Isn’t Always Wrong” (nor is he a lone voice in the wilderness; his views are popular or respected in many academic circles). But that hasn’t caused the Left to ostracize him in the slightest (save in Germany, where people still have a visceral sense of where such logic takes you).