The American Spectator and AmSpecBlog

The Man Who Despises America

Mark Hyman — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:09:00 -0500

The very next paragraph is going to make the nut jobs on the far left excitable beyond belief. I am not referring to all Democrats or even a majority of liberals. I am singling out the "they've-lost-all-touch-with-reality" crowd. This includes Media Matters for America led by the admitted hit-and-run, drunk-driving serial liar. The group includes the unshaven, bathrobe-clad unemployed who live in their mother's basement and are devout followers of MoveOn.Org. It is also the bitter, aging spinster working at the New York Times, the morbidly obese documentary film maker, and cable TV news' resident drama queen who hosts MSNBC's Countdown. They are about to simultaneously suffer from brain aneurisms. So without further delay, I'll say it.

Barack Obama despises America.

When people who voted for Obama in 2008 -- including registered Democrats -- start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it "in for America," then it's clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion.

The central conviction of Obama's ideology is that America is guilty of limitless moral failures and is the chief architect of the world's ills. Obama has boundless enmity for America, its key institutions, and its longtime allies. Consider these facts.

The 30-years of Obama's post-adolescent life are radical by any measure. First, he grew up listening to the ramblings of committed Communist Frank Marshall Davis. It had such a profound effect on him that he wrote fondly of Davis in his first book. In fact, that book is replete with statement after statement about how the U.S. is deeply flawed. Most Americans believe in American exceptionalism. Not so with Obama.

Patriotic Americans would not have listened to the bigoted, anti-Semitic, hate-America rants of a fringe religious leader for 20 seconds let alone for 20 years. Yet, Obama who admitted he attended services at Trinity United Church at least twice a month for two decades called Jeremiah Wright his mentor and his moral sounding board.

Nor would most Americans cultivate a close friendship with an admitted domestic terrorist and his wife whose most notable life's accomplishments were to set off bombs that killed and maimed innocent people.

Joining Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright in organizing attendance at Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's 1995 march on Washington is beyond imaginable. Especially after Farrakhan demonstrated public support for Colonel Muammar Qaddafi during the Libyan Leader's most bellicose years against the U.S., which included Libyan complicity in numerous terrorist attacks.

Obama's view of America in national security and foreign affairs is profoundly disappointing to say the least.

Americans overwhelmingly view the men and women who saved Europe and the Far East during World War II as comprising the Greatest Generation. By his comments and actions, President Obama obviously thinks otherwise.

Obama did not honor American greatness on the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift while on his first European trip. Instead, he accused "America [of having] shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward its European allies.

He also denigrated the accomplishments of the American G.I. during World War II in the Pacific theater when he offered a thinly veiled apology for the U.S. having dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those acts brought the war to a swift conclusion, perhaps saving hundreds of thousands of lives when it appeared Japan was prepared to wage an island-by-island battle to the last man.

Obama ordered the release of the so-called CIA "torture memos," seriously damaging delicate intelligence relations with allied nations and placing at grave risk the safety of U.S. intelligence officers working overseas. The impact of his action handcuffs the ability of U.S. intelligence officials to protect the U.S. and American interests from acts of terrorism.

In a matter of weeks last spring, Obama gave deference to a variety of belligerent leaders while stiff-arming longtime American allies. First, he called for closer relations with Cuba while ignoring that nation's long list of continuing human rights abuses. Then he warmly welcomed Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at an Organization of American States summit.

Next, he failed to respond and set the record straight after Nicaragua's Communist leader Daniel Ortega listed alleged U.S. crimes and atrocities during a nearly one-hour rant at the OAS meeting. It is unsettling that in his own remarks Obama incorrectly claimed the OAS has 36 members rather than the actual 34. Ortega and the hemisphere's other Socialist leaders claim the OAS would include 36 members if Cuba and an independent Puerto Rico were allowed to join. Mere coincidence or Freudian slip?

Immediately following the OAS embarrassments, Obama ignored a request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet. Obama would repeat this snub six months later before agreeing at the last moment to meet Netanyahu after the Israeli leader was en route the U.S.

In his speech before the Muslim world, Obama made the patently absurd claim of equivalency between the status of displaced Palestinians and the slaughter of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. His claim that 7 million Muslims live in the U.S. is a figure inflated by as much as 700%.

In an earlier speech, Obama claimed that the U.S. is not a Christian nation, which is at odds with the fact that 79% of Americans self-identify as Christians and the nation's founders were devout Christians.

In less than six months in office, Obama apologized for Guantanamo Bay; for alleged mistakes committed by the CIA; for U.S. policy in the Americas; for America's history of slavery; for "sacrificing [American] values;" for "hasty decisions" in the war on terror; for "America's standing in the world;" for American errors in foreign policy; and for U.S. relations with the Muslim world.

He pronounced Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology acceptable and he warned Netanyahu against targeting Iran's nuclear facilities. Obama's approach to Iran is eerily similar to that of Jimmy Carter, whose actions contributed to the fall of that nation into the control of Islamic radicals.

This summer, the door to greater individual freedoms in Iran was firmly closed shut when Obama announced the U.S would not meddle in Iran's election and he offered no encouragement to democracy activists who protested the obviously stolen elections. His silence was deafening when regime security agents savagely attacked and killed countless Iranians who took to the streets.

In contrast to his deference to anti-American leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Daniel Ortega, Obama strong-armed Netanyahu on key Israeli matters. In addition to snubbing the Israeli Prime Minister's requests to meet, Obama demanded an end to Israeli settlements and insisted on the creation of a two-state Palestine solution.

Obama abandoned NATO members Poland and the Czech Republic by canceling the central Europe missile defense plan just as rogue nations North Korea and Iran make advances in nuclear and ballistic missile production. The cancellation was demanded by Moscow authorities who have adopted a more confrontational posture toward the west.

Solidarity with freedom-loving East Germans has been a staple of the American presidency for nearly 50 years. John Kennedy pronounced himself a Berliner. Ronald Reagan demanded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev "Tear down this wall!" Yet, this bricks and mortar icon of first, Soviet totalitarianism, and then, second, the end of Soviet domination did not make the cut as Obama chose not to attend the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. In the summer of 2008, Obama altogether skipped mentioning the role of the U.S. -- or even the West, for that matter -- in bringing down the wall, instead crediting "a world that stands as one."

Obama's disagreement with American values and institutions is evident in domestic issues. He has stocked his administration with wild-eyed radicals who believe foreign law trumps the U.S. Constitution (Harold Koh); include an avowed Marxist and "truther" who believes George Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attack and is also an ardent supporter of cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal (Van Jones); and include a devoted admirer of Mao Tse-tung who slaughtered as many as 75 million people (Anita Dunn). (In contrast, George W. Bush's Attorney-General nominee John Ashcroft was savaged by the news media for being an Evangelical Christian.)

Three weeks after America's first black president was sworn in, the nation's first black Attorney-General who was hand-picked by Obama, called America "a nation of cowards" for some perceived race relations shortfall. The understood meaning of Eric Holder's comments is that white people are still racists. However, the reality is the people most preoccupied with fomenting the racial divide are those who populate the ranks of the Obama Administration.

Obama's Homeland Secretary designated military veterans as terrorists-in-waiting to be equally as dangerous as other domestic terrorists including pro-lifers and citizens opposed to the flood of illegal aliens.

One of Obama's very few suggestions to cut into his $1.4 trillion budget deficit was to have servicemen and women pay for their own war injuries. He's all for providing free health care to illegal aliens but believes wounded warriors should foot their own hospital bills. In fact, the Defense Department is about the only sector of government in which Obama has proposed slashing spending.

Hours after a belligerent "African-American Studies" Harvard professor engaged in behavior unbefitting anyone let alone a professional man, Obama accused the exceedingly tolerant Cambridge police officers as having "acted stupidly" and then digressed into how people of color have been unfairly treated by white America.

Bush was prolific in quietly and privately visiting the military wounded and family of the fallen. In contrast, Obama attempted to make political capital of his one visit to Dover Air Force Base. Obama's motives were so transparent that families of 17 of the 18 fallen denied permission for Obama to engage in a photo-op alongside the returning caskets.

In May, Obama immediately issued a statement that he was "shocked and outraged by the murder" of a Kansas doctor specializing in partial-birth abortions. He called it a "heinous act of violence." Attorney-General Holder mobilized U.S. Marshals nationwide to provide protection to abortion clinics.

But Obama remained silent the very next day when two U.S. soldiers were gunned down by a Muslim extremist outside a Little Rock recruiting station. After repeated prodding for a presidential comment, the White House faxed an after-hours statement to select media outlets two days later offering a tepid remark that Obama was "saddened" without even mentioning the soldiers were murdered.

Five months later, another Muslim fanatic gunned down nearly four dozen Americans, killing 13, at the Ft. Hood army base. It was an act that demanded the most serious demeanor of the military's Commander-in-Chief. Yet, Obama referenced the massacre in the most insincere fashion just seconds after a jocular shout-out to an audience member during a public speaking engagement. It was the equivalent of attending a funeral in swimwear while en route to the beach.

The odd inadvertent comment or occasional verbal faux pas can be explained away as just that. However, Obama has a lifetime of comments and actions including 10 months as president that belie his real attitude toward the U.S. The difference between Obama and his immediate predecessors such as Ronald Reagan, the George Bushes and Bill Clinton who actually revere and honor the greatness of America and its citizens and institutions cannot be overstated.

Fear of The Mother

Shawn Macomber — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:08:00 -0500

In his eye-opening, astute new book, The Persecution of Sarah Palin, Matthew Continetti argues that the "story of Sarah Palin is the story of American political journalism's intellectual bankruptcy," and while Continetti's narrative does include plenty of lesser-known biographical detail it also contextualizes Palin into a fascinating case study of the politics of personal destruction as employed by the left-leaning cultural and media elites who constantly tsk-tsk…the politics of personal destruction. "It's not new for a prominent political figure to be hated," Continetti tells TAS. "But it is novel when a political figure becomes so hated so quickly, and for that hatred to be based on so little information." Appalled by this persistent knowledge gap, the Weekly Standard editor undertook the challenge of setting the record straight and answering, to his mind, "the most outrageous insults, myths, and exaggerations directed at her and her family."

Continetti was kind enough to chat recently with TAS about The Persecution of Sarah Palin -- sure to soon be seen as the essential companion to Palin's own upcoming memoir Going Rogue.

One of the most common attacks against those who failed to see Barack Obama as a shining demigod upon a hill was to psychologize an unflattering "fear of the other" onto them, but as you catalogue in detail there was quite a bit of hysteria about this "stranger from the strangest part of America" coming from those same ranks, no? How much projection was going on?

MC: Plenty. But the larger phenomenon is that there are two political Others -- the liberal and the conservative. Each demonizes the other. Each sifts through the evidence, picking out that which confirms their worst fears and ignoring the rest. And yet it was odd, to say the least, that liberals would react in such a hysterical manner to a politician whose reputation rested on bipartisan ethics reform, taking on the oil companies, and overthrowing a state GOP establishment. But, because no one knew anything about Palin, the media shoehorned her into their pre-packaged, one-size-fits-all narrative about socially conservative ignoramuses bent on taking America back to the Stone Age.

Sarah Palin seems to currently be in a horserace with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh for Go-To Bogeyman of the Left. On election night 2009, for example, Chris Matthews unequivocally labeled her a "theocrat," and a denier of "basic American notions of pluralism." Do you think the left's ability to take a bipartisan, popular reformer and turn her into a crank in much of the citizenry's minds will embolden them to take a similar guns-blazing-with-half-truths-and-conspiracy-theories approach in all future campaigns?

MC: I'll have to include that Matthews quote in the paperback edition! But, to answer your question, I think the ferocity of the Palin episode was unique, because her nomination to the vice presidency came as an absolute shock to the media. Most of them had never heard of her, and yet there she was, standing next to John McCain as the balloons fell from the rafters of the XCEL Energy Center. What nerve! And so the environment was ripe for all sorts of rumors and conspiracy theories to fester about this mystery woman from the North.

No one in the press, as you point out, "asked Joe Biden whether he literally believed in the transubstantiation or the Virgin Birth" or complained about explicitly religious ads run on behalf of Barack Obama's campaign, but they were nevertheless more than happy to "twist and contort" Palin until she "fit the stereotype of the boorish, Luddite religious conservative." One gets the impression she could join the Secular Coalition of America and still be denounced as a fundamentalist. Why is it that what was good for the "progressive" goose wound up getting the conservative gander shellacked as a "Christianist"?

MC: Palin's tradition of Christianity was absolutely central to the liberal critique. Simply put, the American left blanches at public expressions of religiosity and believes that political figures should mention their faith only in service of liberal policy aims. Thus it did not matter that millions of people share Palin's Christian faith. Nor did it matter that, in both her gubernatorial administration and on the campaign trail, Palin mentioned her religion rarely and neither governed nor campaigned as a strident social conservative. The stereotype was so powerful that liberals saw zealotry where none existed.

It is nigh impossible to deny that a female vice-presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket would have driven self-proclaimed feminists to insist a powerful independent woman -- who, sure, disagreed with them on policy, but, still… -- should be back at the homestead rearing children and cooking meals rather than in politics. What is it about what you dub as "frontier feminism" that took a potential symbol of female empowerment and achievement and turned her into an enemy of "right-thinking" women?

MC: Palin does not subscribe to the full menu of what the political consultant and author Jeffrey Bell has called "adversarial feminism." But Palin is a feminist. She supports Title IX, frequently mentions the "glass ceiling" separating women from men, attacked Barack Obama for paying his female Senate staff members less than male staff, and outlined a pro-woman foreign policy that Hillary Clinton would be comfortable supporting. But she is also pro-life and does not believe that women necessarily must trade off a happy home life for professional success. And so the feminist establishment began a crusade to expel her from the city of ladies. They succeeded in making her politically polarizing. But, I think, they also irrevocably tarnished their ability to speak on behalf of women as a whole.

"The resemblances between McCain's and Palin's political styles," you write, "are uncanny" -- "Like McCain, Palin becomes self-righteous when she confronts individuals who offend her idealistic sensibilities"; "Like McCain, Palin seemed to revel in holding members of her own party to account"; "Like John McCain, she was the triumphant underdog." Yet not all of these traits have endeared McCain to the conservatives whom Sarah Palin is wildly popular with.

MC: The difference is in the context. What conservatives know about McCain is the many times that he has fought them. When Palin appeared, conservatives, like liberals, knew only that she was pro-life. Then conservatives witnessed the way in which liberals treated her. They rallied to her side. It's interesting to note that, in Alaska, conservatives and Republicans have a much more nuanced -- and sometimes more skeptical -- view of Palin. They did not like when she cut deals with Democrats. They did not like when she criticized the state GOP establishment. So, when you examine her more closely, you see that the parallels between Palin and McCain remain quite striking.

Despite the energy Palin brought to the McCain ticket late in the game, you nevertheless say she was a "loyal soldier in an army that did not appreciate her true value," and that the McCain campaign "made her famous but it also shoehorned her into a bad media strategy and a partisan straitjacket." How was Palin devalued? How could her "true value" unbound have potentially made a difference in the election?

MC: It remains the case that the only time McCain polled ahead of Barack Obama was during the two weeks between the GOP convention and the collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008. I believe that Palin was central to this upsurge in support for the Republican ticket. Could things have turned out differently on Election Day? Probably not. In many ways the 2008 GOP ticket faced an impossible task. It sought to replace an unpopular incumbent of the same party during a time of war and recession. That's a bad bet. Nonetheless, it remains true that the McCain team did not know what they had in Palin. Since they worried about her abilities, they limited her exposure to high-pressure interviews with network television anchors not known for sympathy to conservatives. Had Palin been allowed to speak out more, and to various news outlets, she no doubt would have made some rookie mistakes -- but those mistakes would have disappeared against a larger backdrop of accessibility, common sense, and charm.

"The landscape of Alaska was littered with the carcasses of Republican bulls she had emasculated," one of your sources tells you. The always-incisive Michael Goldfarb, your current colleague and former McCain campaign staffer, says, "She has enemies everywhere in Alaska. And they're all Republicans. The upside had been that she'd worked with Democrats. As soon as she's picked, though, there's no Democrat who'll say anything nice about her." You add, "The Alaskan Palin-haters met willing accomplices in the global media" -- and further note that this is the same media that couldn't find anyone in Alaska with a nice thing to say about a governor with upwards of 80 percent job approval.

To reluctantly drag out a Winston Churchill quote already employed ad nauseam: "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." And the right enemies can say positive things about one's character, of course. But considering the demonization and the resignation in the face of frivolous ethics complaints by partisans unable to let the election go, did Palin's enemies actually achieve some measure of victory? Is this an example of how the political independence and post-ideologue-ness we supposedly hold as a national ideal can be deadly in the arena of political reality?

MC: Victory for Palin's enemies would come if they succeeded in their attempts to drive her out of public life. sThat hasn't happened. If anything, she has become more powerful, more influential, over time. She did more to change the shape of the health care debate in one Facebook post than any other major Republican politician. She led the way in national Republican support for Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. Alaska was holding her down. So she broke free. And now she can speak out as often as she wants.

Palin has a habit of making bold decisions that may seem odd at the time. When she entered the Alaska Republican gubernatorial primary in October 2005, she was making an extremely risky decision. When she made her surprise announcement that she would resign from office on July 26, 2009, nobody knew what to think. In retrospect, both decisions make eminent sense. She won the 2006 primary in a landslide and won the general election to become governor. Her resignation has allowed her to return to the national stage as a leader of the conservative populist revival. We'll see what the future holds. But whatever happens, it will be quite a ride.

The Absolutely Worst Bill Ever

Peter Ferrara — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:08:00 -0500

"The Worst Bill Ever." That is the title the always calm and rational Wall Street Journal put on its editorial on November 1 about the government health care takeover bill that passed the House last week on virtually a party line vote, 220-215. But even this label doesn't fully communicate the outright assault on the American people involved in this legislation. The bill is a serious threat not only to your freedom and prosperity, but to your very life as well.

That is because at the heart of this bill is a cruel perversion. The bill labors mightily (though it actually fails) to expand insurance coverage to everyone (taking the most expensive route possible). But then it is devoted to taking away the very health care that you may need to save your life, or the life of a loved one.

Pelosi's Death Panels

The bill would create 118 new federal boards, bureaucracies, commissions, and programs, which as a group have the power to ration and deny you health care. These are the Pelosi death panels. They include the Health Choices Administration, the Health Benefits Advisory Committee, the Health Insurance Exchange, the Public Health Insurance Option, the Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research, the Comparative Effectiveness Research Commission, the Accountable Care Organization Pilot Program, the Community Based Medical Home Pilot Program, the Independent Patient Centered Medical Home Pilot Program, and many others.

One of the ways that health rationing would be carried out is through so-called "Comparative Effectiveness," where national health care bureaucracies will decide what health care treatments, procedures, therapies and drugs work best, and which don't. You would think that is what your doctor is for, using his medical knowledge and direct personal observation of your condition and health history to prescribe what is best for you. But liberal Democrats insist that faraway federal bureaucrats who don't know anything about you will know exactly what health care will work best, in all cases. The House bill says that the decisions of federal bureaucrats on comparative effectiveness "will be delivered to doctors electronically to guide their use of medical items and services," as Betsy McCaughey reports in the Wall Street Journal on November 7. If doctors don't take the hint, and use their own judgment as to your care instead, they will be penalized in their compensation under Pay for Performance.

That policy was explained in a June report from President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), entitled "The Economic Case for Health Care Reform." That report says that 30% of health care in America is waste, and wise government bureaucrats are going to identify exactly whose health care is waste and cut it out. Another policy for accomplishing this is called "Cost Effectiveness," where wise government bureaucrats will decide whether your health care is worth the cost to society. The House health bill creates the bureaucracies with the power and authority to carry out these policies.

But it is far worse even than this. Through the Public Option, the Medicare cuts discussed below, and new rules and regulations imposed on compensation for doctors, hospitals, and other health providers more generally, the resources that sustain our highly advanced, sophisticated, cutting edge, high tech medical system will be sharply constricted. The incentives for investment in new innovations, advanced medical equipment, new miracle cure drugs, and first-rate hospital and clinic facilities will be decimated. Just when the rapid advancement of science and technology is opening up new vistas to counter disease, suffering, and death, self-congratulatory politicians and bureaucrats are stomping in and shutting it down.

In the future, when you or a loved one is struck with cancer, or heart disease, or your premature baby is struggling for life, the surgery, the machine, the pill that could have saved a life, will not be there. When the doctors come to tell you that there is nothing they can do, they are not going to explain whether that is due to medical science, or to politics and bureaucracy, and you will not know. But more and more likely over time, you will be a victim of the declining American standard of living imposed by ideological extremists, as reflected in part in the loss of the best health care possible.

Exactly to the contrary, our public policy should be focused on maximizing the advancement of health care in this new age of modern science by removing government burdens and barriers. We do need to control costs, but by introducing market incentives for patients, doctors and hospitals, so they can be in charge and make appropriate decisions, free of financially interested third party bureaucracies. It's called Patient Power, the true alternative to what Washington is doing now. Jim Pinkerton has been brilliantly making this case for months now on his Serious Medicine Strategy blog, though the argument goes all the way back to John Goodman's book, Patient Power.

But the left-wing extremists currently in complete control of Washington have no understanding of any of this. They are wedded, emotionally and religiously, to outdated ideological crusades of 100 years ago. This is a time of great challenge for the American people, like World War II, the Civil War, or the Revolutionary War. If you are not involved in the solution, then you are not only letting down America, but your family, and yourself.

Medicare Cuts

One confusion arising from the House bill is that its provisions are phased in over several years. Over the first 10 years of full operation, the House bill actually cuts Medicare by $800 billion, as scored by CBO. The cuts for Medicare Advantage plans will be close to $200 billion, and despite President Obama's phony shtick that if you like your health plan you can keep it, the Administration itself estimates that 8 million seniors will lose their Medicare Advantage plan as a result, 73% of those with such plans.

This is the beginning of health care rationing for seniors, as the payments to their doctors and hospitals for the care that currently maintains their health will be slashed back. In addition, as Betsy McCaughey explains in the Journal, the House bill

moves Medicare from a fee-for-service payment system, in which patients choose which doctors to see and doctors are paid for each service they provide, toward what's called a "medical home." The medical home is this decade's version of HMO restrictions on care. A primary care provider manages access to costly specialists and diagnostic tests for a flat monthly fee. The bill specifies that patients may have to settle for a nurse practitioner rather than a physician as the primary care provider. Medical homes begin with demonstration projects, but… HHS…is authorized to "disseminate this approach rapidly on a national basis."

What this means is that your doctor is paid a flat monthly fee for your care, and referring you to a specialist or for a diagnostic test effectively comes out of his pocket. So if you need an MRI or a CT scan to see if you have cancer, or to check if that pain in your chest is due to clogged arteries, or if you need to see a specialist to treat cancer or heart disease, the doctor has a financial interest to delay or deny it. Financially, if you are actually this sick, he will be better off if you die sooner rather than later. That is the result of the perverted, inverse incentives the House health bill creates for medical providers.

But the Obama Administration has already started the rationing for seniors on Medicare. The recently adopted Medicare payment rules for next year impose an 11% overall cut on cardiology and a 19% cut on radiation oncology (cancer treatment). Payments for basic tools and treatments for heart disease, such as stress tests and catherization, are slashed by 42% and 24% respectively. Payments for diagnostic imaging services like MRIs and CT scans that help identify cancer early are cut by 24%. Payments for antitumor radiation therapy will be cut by 44%.

AARP shamefully provides cover for this attack on the health care of seniors. That is in part because it has always been a liberal/left front group, like ACORN and SEIU, and it is standing up for its left-wing political allies. But it's also because AARP doesn't sell a Medicare Advantage plan, and it wants to drive out the competition to its overly costly Medigap plans.

Soaring Health Costs

The socialized medicine policies adopted in the House health bill will at the same time cause soaring health costs and health insurance premiums. The House bill provides that you or your employer will be forced to buy the health insurance plan specified by the government, regardless of what you want. This will include all of the politically correct benefits no matter how expensive, such as drug rehab, mental health, maternity benefits even if you are over 50, male, or gay. Coverage for abortion too will ultimately be required with politics involved in the decision, no matter what they say now. Many people today are wisely saving a lot of money with high annual deductibles, paying for routine expenses out of pocket. (Does your car insurance pay for oil changes and new tires?) Forget about that under the House bill.

The House bill further adds costly new regulations on health insurance, such as guaranteed issue, which requires coverage for all new applicants regardless of how sick they already are, and community rating, which requires the same premiums for new applicants regardless of health condition. This regulation is like requiring fire insurance companies to insure new applicants whose houses are already on fire, charging them no more than anyone else. Such regulations have caused health insurance premiums to soar even in the context of broader health reform, as we have seen in Massachusetts.

But health insurance premiums will also rise because of increased cost shifting to private insurance from the Medicare cuts, and from the Public Option. The House bill would also radically increase incentives to demand more health care, with the government paying for everything or paying for health insurance to pay for everything. It would also radically reduce the incentives to supply health care by clamping down more and more on payments to doctors, hospitals and other health providers for their services, as discussed above. Increasing demand while reducing supply will produce skyrocketing health costs, which will further increase health insurance premiums.

Readers of this column know I have been saying as much for months. But now comes expert confirmation in a study from WellPoint, which provides transparent insight from its own health insurance files and experience. Their study shows that health insurance premiums for the young and healthy will triple in some states! Average middle class families will see their premiums more than double. A previous study from Price Waterhouse showed quite similar results. These studies didn't even take into account all of the factors above.

Democrats and their allies have responded with name-calling and libel, with no substantive response. If they pass a final bill without a public option, when premiums do rise as a result for all of the above reasons, they will be back arguing this shows the Republicans were wrong about not needing competition from a public plan. You can't argue with religion.

By the way, the profits of the 10 largest health insurance companies last year totaled $8 billion, combined. That is less than one half of one percent of total health costs. It's not an issue, except for socialists.

Soaring Taxes and Deficits

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims that the House bill is deficit neutral. But that is based on a 21.5% cut next year in payments to doctors under Medicare included in the bill. That is so ridiculous that even the Democrats don't believe in it. So in a separate bill they propose to restore $250 billion of those cuts, adding that entire amount to the deficit! So how can the House bill really be considered deficit neutral, based on a huge cut so ridiculous the Democrats themselves immediately reverse it in another bill? Has our government ever been this brazenly dishonest?

Over the first full 10 years of operation, CBO estimates that the bill will cost $1.8 trillion, not the $829 billion claimed by Speaker Pelosi, actually misrepresenting the CBO score. The actual costs counting all spending increases, which haven't been scored by CBO yet, will be $2.4 trillion to $3 trillion. The bill costs so much because with an overwhelming entitlement crisis already looming, the House bill insists on massively expanding Medicaid, adding 18 million more people, and adopting a new middle class entitlement providing subsidies to buy health insurance for those making up to $96,000 a year for a family of four in 2016.

The $700 billion in tax increases, plus the Medicare cuts, won't be enough to cover all those costs, adding hundreds of billions to the deficit. In particular, the bill relies on an income tax surcharge adding 5.4% to the top income tax rate. Along with the Obama tax rate increases already planned for 2011, the top marginal federal tax rate will soar to almost 48% from 35% today. Counting state income taxes, the average top income tax rate in America would climb to about 52%. The top U.S. income tax rate would then be higher than in France, Germany, Canada, and 23 other countries in the OECD. In five states dominated by Democrats, California, New York, New Jersey, Hawaii, and Oregon, the total top tax rate would be higher than in socialist Sweden. That top tax rate increase won't raise nearly the $460 billion CBO now projects because of its uncounted, counterproductive economic effects.

But the total spending and resulting deficits will be far higher than even this. CBO assumes that only 30 million will qualify for the middle class entitlement subsidies, with 162 million in employer provided coverage not eligible for the subsidies as a result. But with employers who drop their coverage subject to an 8% payroll tax, and less for small businesses, many will have an incentive to do precisely that, especially since the workers can then get the government subsidies. If your payroll averages $40,000, then 8% is only $3200 per worker, likely much less than the cost of current coverage. This could more than double the projected cost over the first full 10 years, as millions more lose their employer coverage and become eligible for the subsidies.

Finally, remember President Obama's ironclad election year promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 per year, in any form, which won him election? Under the House bill, which President Obama has now endorsed, workers who don't buy insurance will have to pay an income tax penalty equal to 2.5% of income, including those in the bottom 50% of income earners who don't pay any income tax now. If they do buy the mandated insurance, then they will bear costs for the premiums of 1.5% to 12% of income for those making less than $250,000. That is effectively a whole new payroll tax on workers.

President Obama, however, says this is not a tax. But, then, President Obama says lots of things we've learned we cannot believe in.

Mr. Ferrara is the author of "The Obama Health Plan: Rationing, Higher Taxes, and Lower Quality Care," published by the Heartland Institute.

On Speed

Eric Peters — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:07:00 -0500

Some of my very earliest memories are of highway speed limit signs with "70" or even "75" on them. This was in the early 1970s. I also remember my parents routinely driving around 80 mph on these roads. At that time, such speeds were only a few mph above the typical highway maximums, so even if you did get pulled over, the resultant ticket would generally be a minor offense involving a fine -- but no threat of arrest or being charged with "reckless driving."

Then came Richard Nixon and with him the 55 mph National Maximum Speed Limit, imposed in 1974 as a "fuel saving" measure. But the tickets issued were not for "wasting gas." They were issued for "speeding." And these "speeding" tickets became evidence of your allegedly "unsafe" driving habits -- to be used against you by both the state authorities in the form of "points" on your driving record (that might lead to suspension of your driving privileges) or by your insurer to impose rate increases that allegedly reflected the "increased risk" your "speeding" represented.

It did not weigh in your favor that you never actually had an accident or incurred a loss of any sort. Your record might be spotlessly clean in that respect, but it didn't matter. The tickets mattered. "Speeding" was, ipso facto, evidence that you weren't a "safe driver," even though driving those same speeds had been perfectly legal just a few years before.

A massive propaganda campaign ensued to justify the new regime -- with the mantra that "speed kills!" its overarching message.

And everyone had to pretend that it did, just as all North Koreans pay homage to the Dear Leader's infallible genius.

Teenagers were forced to recite the mantra in order to pass driver's education and get their licenses; adults were compelled to bow and scrape before cops and judges, pretending (and sometimes even believing) it was so.

I began my driving career in the early '80s and so lived the horror. During my college days (late 1980s) I received multiple tickets for "reckless driving" -- for doing between 76 and 80 mph on the same highways that, prior to 1974, were posted at 70 (and which after the repeal of the NMSL in 1995, returned to 65).

The fines amounted to thousands of dollars. I had my license suspended. My insurance was sky high. Then in '95, Congress repealed the statute imposing the 55 mph highway limit. All of a sudden it was legal -- and apparently, "safe" -- to do 65 again.

What had been "reckless driving" (arbitrarily defined as driving more than 20 mph above the posted maximum -- whatever that maximum might be and no matter what it once was) and which had cost me a fortune in fines and hiked insurance, was once again a (relatively) minor speeding ticket.

I -- along with millions of other drivers -- never received a refund for all those tickets, nor for the years of paying exorbitantly high insurance premiums.

Things are better now, but not ideal. A few states out West (Utah, Texas) have toyed with higher limits but circa 2010, most highway speed limits are still set 5-10 mph below what they were in the early 1970s -- notwithstanding 30-plus years of massive, even geometric improvement in vehicle design.

Driving at speeds that were considered reasonable and prudent (and which were completely legal) 30 years ago is today still largely considered "speeding" -- even given modern cars that are far more crashworthy (and far less likely to be involved in a crash to begin with) than the cars of the early 1970s.

It's such transparent BS that virtually everyone snickers with contempt at the system and feels no guilt whatsoever about ignoring these arbitrarily confected speed limits whenever possible. If there's no cop in sight, virtually every car is exceeding the posted maximum.

And when one is nabbed by a cop, one feels outrage and disgust -- which would evidence of sociopathy except for the fact that it is normal, otherwise law-abiding people we are speaking of here, not criminals.

People know they are being milked, and they rightly resent it.

If the laws were reasonable, very few people would ever be ensnared by them -- as with laws against stealing, rape, murder and so on. When a law -- any law -- effectively criminalizes broad swaths of the population, especially people who are otherwise "law abiding" and reasonable, it is pretty strong evidence that the law in question is screwy.

Other examples of this include the 1920s-era Prohibition of alcohol (another "crusade" with moralistic undertones but few factual supports). And as happened under Prohibition, respect for the law, in general (and its enforcers) declined precipitously -- and a corrupting influence leached into law enforcement.

Just as has happened with traffic enforcement.

State and local governments have become extremely dependent upon the millions of dollars they rake in every year via the "motorist tax" -- and this heavily (and negatively) influences any effort aimed at reforming these unreasonable, even tyrannical laws. If speed limits were raised to reasonable levels most drivers would not be technically guilty of "speeding" (and subject to a ticket) virtually every time they got behind the wheel. That, in turn, would mean a drastic reduction in "revenue" collected by the armed tax collectors who call themselves police.

And we can't have that.

Word Freight

Peter Hannaford — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:06:00 -0500

Words carry freight. Sometimes it's only the dictionary meaning drummed into us in the past. Other words conjure a picture. Take "swashbuckler." Recently, a popular conservative journal had an article about a coming contest for the Republican state chairmanship. One candidate was described as "swashbuckling." The accompanying head-and-shoulders photo showed a nice looking, well-groomed chap, about 50, in a neat suit and tie. He didn't look like any swashbucklers that came to mind, such as pirates spearing hapless sailors as they invaded a Spanish galleon, or Errol Flynn spearing pirates.

I found "swashbuckler" in a 1931 dictionary: "A braggart; a swaggerer." We'll have to leave it to the Republicans of that state to decide if they want a crypto-swaggerer for a chairman.

The French, who have a way with well-turned phrases, consider all English words to be freight -- actually excess baggage -- when used in their country. Its General Commission of Terminology and Neology, reports the Wall Street Journal, has the responsibility to give proper French terms to things that didn't originate in France. It has been struggling with "cloud computing," the term used for gaining Internet access to multiple resources. Having lost the battle over "le weekend" and "le drugstore," the word scientists of the Commission weren't going to take this challenge lying down. Argue and struggle they did, finally settling on "informatique en nuage" -- computing in (a) cloud.

Meanwhile, back home, there is the word "save." Its primary definition is, "to rescue or preserve from harm, danger, injury, etc; make or keep safe." That is the way President Obama and various of his tribunes have been using the word when they have asserted such things as "we created or saved 640,000 jobs." Recently, they said it was, maybe, "up to a million."

The way statistics are recorded it is fairly easy to measure jobs "created," but how does one measure jobs "saved"? Is it done by compiling press releases ("Company A today announced it would not cut 10 percent of its work force, after all")? No. It is done by guessing, nudging and fudging data. By wrapping actual jobs created, an ascertainable figure, with some imagined number of jobs "saved" by federal largesse, one can inflate the total number so it looks good on the evening news.

The Obama folks have been doing this probably to help us forget their promise back in February that if the Congress would pass the $700 billion "stimulus" package unemployment would not go above 8 percent. This week it's at 10.2.

Last week, Vice President Joe Biden, the administration's cheerleader for jobs "created or saved," with California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger by his side, was again touting the wonders of government spending. Schwarzenegger bragged about "those 100,000 people that have retained their jobs or gotten jobs because of the stimulus money."

At that news, the Sacramento Bee did some digging and reported, "Up to one-fourth of the 110,000 jobs reported as saved by federal stimulus money in California probably never were in danger."

For example, the California State University system reported that it had saved more jobs with stimulus funds than the total saved in Texas and 44 other states. As evidence, it reported that $268.5 million in stimulus money received through last month made it possible to save 26,156 jobs in its system. That is more than half the CSU work force.

Curious Bee reporters found that reality was different. CSU officials, when pressed, confirmed that half their workers were not going to be fired without the stimulus dollars. A spokeswoman was quoted as saying, "That is not really a real number of people. It's like a budget number."

Oh.

How many other agencies in how many other state governments were not reporting "real" people but only "budget numbers"? We'll never know, but we do know the French have a saying for this sort of thing: "informatique en nuage" -- computing in (a) cloud.

We Win, They Lose

Lisa Fabrizio — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:06:00 -0500

Another week in the life of our nation sweeps by, and with it comes more evidence that the gloom and doom that has enveloped conservatives for the past year may finally be lifting. It's not so much the election of Republicans to the governorships of Virginia and especially New Jersey; although to be sure, these were most welcome events. After all, liberal northeastern states like Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut have traditionally favored Republican "daddies" to preside over the state coffers while sending their liberal "nannies" off to Washington to deepen the federal deficit.

No, it's not so much what happened as how the reaction to these events by President Obama and his administration will be perceived by the voting public. And if there is any consistency to the American character, it won't be pretty for the big O. Despite the sorry economic picture with its double-digit unemployment rate, and even laying aside the increasingly unpopular government takeovers of our banking, auto, and healthcare industries, the issue that will soon usher Democrats out of power is national defense.

This week the world marked the 20th Anniversary of the demise of the Berlin Wall, that symbol of the inhuman regard that communists have for human beings; almost one hundred miles of proof that it is not free nations that have to wall their people in to keep them from getting out. Quite the opposite is true; countries like ours have a hard time keeping people who long for liberty and freedom out.

Yet our president -- sworn defender of the U.S. Constitution -- has seen fit to skip the celebration of the restoration to millions of peoples the freedoms that our venerated document represents and guarantees. This is not only a slap in the face to our allies, but in keeping with his apology tour of earlier this year, it is a further reminder that Barack Obama does not share much of the country's reverence for the American Dream.

Ronald Reagan, hero at the Brandenburg Gate, and George W. Bush, scourge of the Axis of Evil, understood that Dream as not just an opportunity for a higher standard of living, but a life of freedom from tyranny and fear. For these ideals, many U.S. soldiers have given their lives, but sadly, in the upside-down America of Barack Obama, their returning comrades are now considered potential terrorists.

And this brings us to outrage number two: the president's handling of the Fort Hood shootings. For a man who flies to Europe in a vain and shallow attempt to secure the Olympics for his hometown, and spends millions for a "date" with his wife in New York City, his refusal to speed immediately to the scene of an attack on a U.S. Army base is reprehensible. Even worse is his apparent inability to even consider that the killings are part of the global Islamist jihad.

This man, whose administration has decreed that we are no longer engaged in a "war on terror," must, in his own mind, actually believe it. There's no other explanation for his dithering for two months on whether or not to acquiesce to the request of his generals on the ground for more troops in Afghanistan. It is not hard to understand that this kind of overcautious indecision on the part of the commander of the greatest fighting force in modern history is indeed unprecedented, and can only serve to embolden our enemies.

But the American people know that those enemies are still out there, and in case they had grown forgetful due to the wonderful job George W. Bush did in protecting this country, there are plenty of men like Nidal Malik Hasan to remind them. America saw the face of evil up close and all too personally on 9/11 and has no stomach for a repeat of the carnage wrought on that dark day.

One of Ronald Reagan's greatest campaign ads was called "The Bear," which warned of the perils of ignoring one's enemies, and his strategy for winning the Cold War was simple: "We win, they lose." Of course we are told that things are much more complex now and were reminded nearly every day for eight years that George W. Bush wasn't fit to deal with the nuances of foreign affairs. But, as has been proven, the simplicity of Bush and Reagan has kept us safe. Most Americans still believe in the "big stick" theory and prefer to leave the nuanced, diplomatic approach to the French and those who think like them.

For the first time in years, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on all of the major issues facing this country, but they hold a whopping 23 point edge on national defense. Reagan Democrats -- or moderate Independents as they are now known -- are coming back; not of their own volition, but because Obama is rousing them out of their sleep like so many zombies from their graves. He is proving what Americans have known in the past and are beginning to remember again; liberals cannot be trusted to keep our nation safe.

Antichrist

James Bowman — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:02:00 -0500

You only have to hear the plot summary of Lars von Trier's Antichrist to hate it. It begins with scenes of a couple (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe) enjoying carnal relations in pornographic detail as the haunting Handel aria, "Lascia ch'io pianga" ("Let me weep") from Rinaldo, plays on the soundtrack. Intercut with these scenes are others of a toddler, clutching a stuffed animal, as he makes his purposeful way to an upper-storey window out of which he falls to his death, seemingly at the same moment that Miss Gainsbourg, known only as "She" and presumably the child's mother, experiences a shuddering orgasm. Naturally, the couple are both grief- and guilt-stricken, and they retreat to a cabin called "Eden" in the remote forests of (ostensibly) Washington state where their attempts at a therapeutic resolution of their conflicted feelings -- the husband, known only as "He," is a therapist who undertakes to treat his own wife -- soon gives way to torture and murder of a particularly graphic and revolting kind.

Nature, described by "She" as "Satan's church," appears to look on approvingly. In particular, a not-so fantastic Mr. Fox is made to say, or bark, "Chaos reigns" to the camera in a scene that has been widely mocked by the critical fraternity and hooted at by audiences at Cannes. They as well as a host of other viewers-with-alarm who have publicly deplored the film's pornography, both the regular kind and the violence porn, have probably been responsible for making Antichrist into the succès de scandale that must have been Mr. von Trier's aim, but that does not mean they are not right in finding much to hate about it, including the fact that, like several others among Mr. von Trier's oeuvre, it appears to have an unhealthy if not pathological interest in detailed images of women being tortured and killed.

Yet it is not quite true that the picture has no redeeming features. Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Dear Wendy -- all these I thought were almost if not completely worthless: vile, anti-American, politically tendentious trash that seemed to me false in nearly every detail. There was in each of them, probably, a degree of working out of their author's own psycho-sexual "hangups" (as some of us used to call them back in the 1960s), but they had nothing to say of the world outside his dark imagination. That is not quite true of Antichrist, although in the end there is so much that is wrong with the movie that it overwhelms the little that is right -- or at least worth considering.

That part, in my view, lies in its unique seriousness of its inquiry into the origins of male misogyny. "She" makes frequent reference to a sort of scrapbook labeled "Gynocide," which may or may not be the "thesis" that "He" was once supposed to have thought "glib." He seems to be her academic adviser as well as her husband and therapist. In the book there are accounts of the usual sorts of things -- witch-burnings and whatnot -- that feminists have historically identified as the characteristic crimes of the so-called Patriarchy. But "She" appears not to approach them in a feminist spirit so much as one of emulation. Like the superstitious peasants of centuries past, she acts as if she believes in witches, and she seems at times -- though not without hesitation and ambiguity -- to aspire to be a witch herself.

The idea, I think, is that she has embraced the misogynistic caricature of women as her own assumed identity in order to call down upon her head the capital punishment once meted out to witches. Most of her witchery consists of the tortures she devises for her husband and herself -- the latter including an auto-clitoridectomy -- even though these are naturalistically (and disgustingly) rather than supernaturally applied. But there are also hints of the occult in addition to the numerous religious allusions which, like the film's title, are designed to create a portentously cosmic stage-set for its harrowing images. At one point, after mentioning two German sisters of the Middle Ages who were supposed to have had the power to cause hailstorms, "She" concentrates very hard and appears to cause a hailstorm herself. So, are we to suppose that Mr. von Trier believes in witches too?

Probably not. But he may well believe as "She" does, or says she does, that there is no reason to suppose that women are exempted from the "evil" in human nature, and that if evil things have been done to and are still being done to them, these things are quite likely to be related to evil things they have done. It's a stunningly politically incorrect idea, and Mr. von Trier doesn't quite have the courage to do more than suggest it and then draw back for yet another scene of innocent -- or even not-so-innocent -- femininity being vilely treated by a man. That the man in this case has been tortured by her in the first instance means that the scene lacks some of the moral weight it might otherwise have had in this equation on account of the lurid and cinematic nature of the tortures, and the fact that they are answered by a particularly revolting act of torture committed against herself.

"I make my movies to provoke myself. I take a subject and a point of view that I do not share, and then I defend that," said Mr. von Trier in an interview, which is a helpful attitude to have when you are acting, as he is in Antichrist, as the devil's advocate. The trouble is that we're never quite sure if the devil whose case he is arguing is the actual principle of evil in the universe -- always assuming there is such a thing -- or merely some painted pantomime devil dragged in from the literature of political correctness. Worse, he's not sure himself. This is a "what if" movie. The author appears to be asking himself "what if" there really were a devil, and therefore a God, on whom suffering could be blamed? But Mr. von Trier can't quite suspend his disbelief for long enough to act as if there were.

Abandoned Under Obama

Heather Robinson — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:09:00 -0500

Earlier this month, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, a self-described "Muslim Zionist," traveled to the U.S. to address audiences in New York City and at Yale University. Publisher of the largest English-language weekly newspaper in Bangladesh, Choudhury has been jailed, beaten, nearly blinded, and is now on trial for his life for his reporting, and for his pro-American, pro-Israeli views.

"They say I have conspired against the sovereignty of Bangladesh by trying to travel to Israel and praising Jews and Christians," Choudhury said last week at a gathering in New York of the Hudson Institute, a Washington D.C.-based think tank described on its web site as dedicated to promoting "global security, prosperity, and freedom."

Bangladesh has slapped Choudhury with charges of blasphemy, treason, and sedition, the last of which potentially carries the death penalty. Disturbingly, as Choudhury returns to Bangladesh this week to face trial, the United States has seemingly turned its back on him.

Prior to the inauguration of Barack Obama, the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka was sending observers to monitor Choudhury's trial, according to Richard Benkin, an American human rights activist who helped, with the cooperation of U.S. Congressman Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), to secure Choudhury's release from prison in 2003. But since January, Benkin says, the U.S. embassy has stopped sending the observers.

"That is significant," Benkin says, "because [the presence of observers] let the Bangladeshis know there were eyes on this…. Having no observers makes it easier for the Bangladeshis to place Islamist ideology, which includes demonizing the U.S. and Israel, over the norms of Bangladeshi law and norms of justice and human rights."

During the Bush years, according to Choudhury and Benkin, not only were monitors sent into the courtroom, but the U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh regularly checked in with the Bangladeshi government to monitor the case. Since January, 2009, however, Choudhury says "[The] US Embassy in Dhaka has stopped monitoring [his] case."

This development is ominous because the Bangladeshi government continues to move the case forward without respect to the law in an effort to please radical Islamists within that country, according to Benkin.

"Since the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka has stopped sending observers, the Bangladeshis have moved the trial forward towards a likely conviction," said Benkin. "Government witnesses have not been challenged when presenting false information or information completely unrelated to the case. When observers were there, this did not go on."

Some decry any U.S. involvement in another country's judicial affairs. But Benkin points out that the observers were not on hand to impose U.S. or international standards of justice. Rather, they were local Bangladeshi attorneys with a mandate to monitor the court's adherence to Bangladeshi law. Their absence increases the likelihood Choudhury will be offered up as a sacrificial lamb to please Islamists, Benkin fears.

"Not having observers sends a signal [that] the Bangladeshis do not have to concern themselves with a negative reaction from the U.S.," he said. "So if there's not going to be resistance, they'll make the Islamists happy."

Choudhury's personal story illustrates why his case is especially significant. In 2003, after doing online research about Israel and publishing articles about the Jewish state, he received an invitation to attend a writers' conference there. On his way, he was arrested by government agents at the airport in Dhaka, incarcerated, and tortured.

After 17 months imprisonment, during which time he was denied medication for his glaucoma and nearly lost his vision, Benkin, a friend via online correspondence (although they had never met), managed to secure Choudhury's release with help from Kirk. In March 2007, Kirk led his congressional colleagues in passing HR 64, a resolution calling on Bangladesh to drop all charges against Choudhury, cease harassment of him, and provide him security protection.

The security protection was intermittent, and the harassment continued. Choudhury and his staff were attacked several times subsequently by mobs thought to be sent by the government, which at that time was center-right. In March, 2008, he was abducted at gunpoint by the Rapid Action Battalion (R.A.B.), a paramilitary wing of the government, and then released following advocacy on the part of Kirk and other members of the U.S. Congress.

This February, individuals whom Choudhury believes to be members of Bangladesh's current ruling party, the left-wing Awami League, stormed his newspaper's offices and beat him so severely he sustained hearing loss (Benkin points out that while the government in Bangladesh has changed several times since 2003, one constant has been the persecution of Choudhury).

But Choudhury continues to publish his newspaper, whose print circulation is now 37,000. This month he published a book, Inside Madrassa, that chronicles his investigation into the 73,000 Muslim religious schools, or madrassas, of Bangladesh. He charges that these schools are funded by sources in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran to turn the children of his traditionally moderate Muslim country into jihadists programmed to "kill the Jews and the Christians … and remain good Muslims."

As he explained during his visit to the U.S. this month, during which he addressed groups including the American Jewish Committee in New York and graduate students of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of ant-Semitism, he won't stop fighting jihadism or, as he terms it, "political Islam." He will continue to expose the brainwashing of innocent children, to support Israel, to promote interfaith cooperation -- and to remain a Muslim.

"Only a person who is a Muslim can reform Islamic laws," he explained. "To reform something you have to remain in that society, correct? If you are an outsider, you can criticize, but… you are not part of the society who can do something to change it."

He won't leave Bangladesh, either, despite offers of asylum, because he believes that would hand the Islamists and their apologists a victory. He refuses to give them free reign to radicalize his country.

Choudhury is risking his life for a free press, religious pluralism, and human rights -- the very values that U.S. service members are fighting to uphold in Afghanistan and Iraq. As Americans concerned with defending those values and winning the war of ideas, his fate should be of utmost concern to us.

And yet, this Wednesday November 11, Choudhury will appear in a Dhaka courtroom without so much as a word of encouragement from the U.S. government. International human rights advocate and former Attorney General of Canada Irwin Kotler has filed an amicus curiae brief identifying almost two dozen ways the case against Choudhury violates both Bangladeshi and international law. But there will be no U.S. monitors. In fact, according to Benkin, the U.S. embassy in Dhaka no longer even returns Choudhury's phone calls.

This seeming abandonment of a defender of freedom in the Muslim world is disturbing, especially in light of a larger pattern on the part of the Obama Administration. While peaceful protestors in Iran are shot and beaten by baton-wielding Basijis, President Obama stays silent as long as possible in deference to Iran's mullahs, and then offers only tepid words of support for the protestors, while simultaneously de-funding U.S. groups promoting human rights in Iran.

(An argument can be made that in remaining silent during the initial days of last June's protests, President Obama was denying the mullahs ammunition to delegitimize the protestors. But those freedom-fighters disagree: just this week, thousands took to the streets, again risking their lives and shouting: "Obama! Obama! Either with them or with us!")

And in a stunning act of pre-emptive appeasement, Mr. Obama became first U.S. President since 1991 to decline to meet with the Dalai Lama when the man came to Washington D.C. last month (no doubt the Chinese were delighted to be thus accommodated, having assumed, according to the Washington Post, that Mr. Obama would continue the Presidential tradition of meeting with the exiled leader of Tibet).

When does tolerance become tolerance of tyranny? And when does diplomacy become a euphemism for lack of moral conviction and courage?

At a certain point, refusal to take a side in the great ideological battles of our time becomes counterproductive to our efforts to uphold freedom and human rights worldwide. Continued, this policy of appeasement will weaken the United States.

The Wall, The Fort, and a Movie: The Real Disaster of 2012

Jeffrey Lord — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:08:00 -0500

They are the prototypical Reagan stories.

Everyone of any approved sensibility believes X. Ex-presidents. Cabinet members and ex-Cabinet members. The Staff. The Friends. The Media, Religiondom and all of Academia. All or most of The People Who Count.

Yet…yet.… Ronald Reagan believes something else. He believes, in fact, Not X. Why? He keeps looking at what he is seeing. He reads. He questions what he ses. He has also, not coincidentally, lived an experienced life at almost 70 years of age.

And so… he does precisely what all of the above advise him not to do. He cuts taxes. He pushes hard on missile defense. He refuses to negotiate with Soviet leaders when all of his predecessors have, and he walks out of a summit… something that none of his predecessors would ever think of doing. And he flatly refuses to take four simple words out of his speech in Berlin. The words are now etched in human history: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

For a superb recounting of this episode, here's a link to a great piece from my former down-the-hall colleague Tony Dolan over at the Wall Street Journal. Tony was President Reagan's chief speechwriter, and he tells the tale of the behind-the-scenes obstacles to Reagan in simply uttering what he believed heart and soul.

As the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is celebrated, the events surrounding the anniversary stand in the shadow of the terrible news out of Fort Hood, Texas.

Those events -- the mass murder committed by a U.S. Army soldier who was also a Muslim -- beg the question: Where are the independent thinkers in the Army, the Pentagon, the White House and elsewhere in government?

Where are the Reagans? By which is meant not those Reaganites of a conservative bent (although heaven knows we need more of those!). Rather to think like Reagan is also to have the power to understand the correct answer to the question: What am I really seeing here? Or, as George Orwell put it, the ability to understand that "to see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle" -- and then be willing to act. To do something.

And all the while, most importantly, not being afraid to speak the answer to what you are seeing. To speak that answer out loud. Even -- especially -- if you are alone in doing so.

There is a colloquialism for this. To wit: "If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck -- chances are it's a duck."

Ronald Reagan was very, very good at understanding this.

This, of course, is the moral in the behind the scenes tale of Reagan and his now famous speech at the Berlin Wall. Excepting speechwriters Dolan and Peter Robinson -- and most importantly Ronald Reagan himself -- there were others aplenty, all of significant stature, who counseled against putting the "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" line in the speech.

Reagan refused to remove the line. Why? Because he had spent a considerable portion of his career coming to entirely different assessments than others based on his ability to understand what in fact he was looking at. He saw the practical effects of a 90 percent tax rate when he was making movies. He saw what Communism was all about in part because his life was threatened by Communist thugs trying to take over Hollywood when he was the Screen Actors Guild president. He knew the effect of violence on college campuses was damaging the university system when he was governor of California, and determined to do something about it. So too did he understand the ultimate failure that was the Berlin Wall from the moment it was going up -- and the importance to human freedom everywhere in the world in getting it destroyed.

Which brings us to Ft. Hood.

The news accounts out there abound, and they should concern. The United States military, like any other organization, is only as good as the capability of those inside the organization to understand what they are seeing. And not be afraid to say what they think they are seeing. To be, like Reagan, the man or woman in the room who doesn't hesitate to say that the approaching creature that walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck -- is in fact a duck. Not something else.

The disturbing reports coming with increasing frequency in the media are that many inside the military looked straight into the literal face and record of a man devoted to Islamic fundamentalism -- the proverbial duck -- and chose to think him a Thanksgiving turkey with an exotic feather or two. Perhaps even something else entirely -- a vanilla ice cream soda. The reincarnation of Freud. An iPod. Anything.

Anything other than what in fact Major Nidal Malik Hasan actually seems to have been: a devoted Islamic fundamentalist who believed that the men and women with whom he served every single day were in fact The Infidels. And as Infidels, they needed to meet the end that Allah had long ago determined they must meet. Major Hasan, with a trail of statements and actions practically littering the life already behind him, inevitably saw to it that the job was done.

Nidal Malik Hasan was a duck. He looked like a duck. He walked like a duck. He talked like a duck.

This unwillingness to confront the reality of the duck that is Islamic fundamentalism is not just showing up in the military.

Just this weekend, the New York Times interviewed Hollywood director Roland Emmerich. Mr. Emmerich is the mind behind such cinematic blockbusters as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. Apparently your standard brand liberal, German-issue, Emmerich is in the news because his newest film, 2012, is about to explode in a theater near you.

Now picture this. Here you have a man, a very talented filmmaker, who has created these highly successful commercial blockbusters, all of which have some version of massive and spectacular destruction being visited on poor old Planet Earth. In Independence Day the danger was from aliens, and the destruction was spectacular. The White House was zapped, as the Times notes, with a "blue death ray." One earthly architectural icon after another meets with a larger than life and always explosive fate. In the Day After Tomorrow, a movie Al Gore surely loved, all sorts of natural disasters took place, with earth's physical geography getting hammered because of those stupid, greedy global warmers.

So in 2012 apparently even more of these luscious special-effects disasters ensue. Rio de Janeiro? Poof. California? Into the sea. Washington, D.C.? This time the White House gets smashed to smithereens by the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy. (I know, I know, the JFK is now tightly mothballed, but hey -- this is Hollywood.) And so on and on, all across the globe.

Rome? Yes, yes. You don't think religion is safe in Mr. Emmerich's writing and directing extravaganzas, do you? The Vatican gets a death blow, with the dome of St. Peter's Basilica -- the legendary visual symbol of the seat of Catholicism and the founding of Christianity -- toppling over on people's heads like a dead whale dropped from the sky. Tibet? Home to the Dalai Lama? "Razed" as the Times puts it.

But wait. Every famous faith doesn't get whacked in 2012. What escapes -- by virtue not of a movie plot line but just simply not being in the movie, period?

You guessed it. Mecca. The Vatican of Islam. Safe. Not even in the film. Untouched, and unscathed, without so much as a computerized rain drop ruining its day. Why? Let's let the brave and bold artist Mr. Emmerich speak for himself, as quoted by the Times:

"My co-writer, Harald (Kloser) said, 'I'm not writing this to get a fatwa on my head. We have Jesus falling apart in all kinds of forms. The Vatican falls on people's heads, and we can do that because we're a free, Western society, but if there would be, like, Mecca destroyed, there would be an outrage. And so you don't do it. At the end of the thing it's entertainment."

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the New York Times, is a stout defense (shockingly enough) of the Times decision to reject an op-ed defending the faith from the new Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan. The good Archbishop, it seems, was deeply offended by what he saw as Catholic-bashing in the Times, with several incidents mentioned including a column by Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

Refused space in the Times to answer Catholic critics, the infuriated Archbishop Dolan took to his blog, saying, in part, this:

It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime. Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as "the deepest bias in the history of the American people," while John Higham described it as "the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history." "The anti-Semitism of the left," is how Paul Viereck reads it, and Professor Philip Jenkins sub-titles his book on the topic "the last acceptable prejudice."

He concludes by saying this of columnist Maureen Dowd:

Finally, the most combustible example of all came Sunday with an intemperate and scurrilous piece by Maureen Dowd on the opinion pages of the Times. In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women, all the while slashing Pope Benedict XVI for his shoes, his forced conscription -- along with every other German teenage boy -- into the German army, his outreach to former Catholics, and his recent welcome to Anglicans.

This in turn created a kerfuffle in the Times and the paper's "Public Editor" took his column to respond, letting Ms. Dowd defend herself. Her defense consisted of grousings about nuns and modernity, of what she, a Catholic herself, called "the moral crisis" in the Catholic Church.

Meanwhile, on the front page of the editorial section containing the Times Public Editor's column, is the lead story on the Fort Hood shooting, headlined "When Minds Snap." That's right. What happened with Major Hasan was not about being an Islamic fundamentalist. Nooooooo siree. His mind just snapped.

Surely, blaming what happened as a mind snapping rather than an act of Islamic terror is just a coincidence, right?

Well, no. Remember those Danish cartoons of Mohammed that launched riots in the Muslim world back there in 2006? News, right? Well, not in the New York Times, which refused to publish the cartoons to let its readers know what the fuss was about. Instead, the Times said that its decision not to publish the cartoons "seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols."

Catch that? The Times respectfully wanted to avoid "gratuitous assaults" on Islam. But the Catholics? What's the big deal??? You go, Mo! Mo, by the way, seems to have a Roland Emmerich-style courage when it comes to criticizing Islam. Like, the girl isn't going there. The last thing she needs is a Georgetown Jihad. Talk about ruining a good party! Severed heads, suicide bombers upsetting the martini tray. Oh man.

So what do we have here?

The American military is looking straight into the face and record of a man who, duck-like, appears to be a duck. An Islamic fundamentalist duck. But it appears the military, in a haze of political correctness, flinched. They did nothing. Why?

Because even the fearless American military appears to suffer from a fear of political correctness. And political correctness is a cousin to the reason Mecca will not be suffering the same cinematic fate as the Vatican in Roland Emmerich's 2012. Which in turn is a cousin to the same journalistic reason those Danish cartoons did not end up on the front page of the New York Times. Which in its turn is the same reason Mo Dowd and the Times will endlessly assault the Catholic Church in a "gratuitous" fashion -- but wouldn't dare breathe a Georgetown-cocktail party breath about the, ahhhhhhhh, interesting internals that seem to trouble Islam.

Again, go back to those words of Archbishop Dolan on columnist Dowd:

In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic.....religious issue..

The Archbishop is right, perhaps more so than even he realizes.

Not only would there be an "outrage" towards the Times as Mr. Emmerich feared for his movie. It seems clear Ms. Dowd and the Times are, like Mr. Emmerich's co-writer, scared witless they will be at the mercy of something a bit more definitive than the outrage of an Archbishop's blog.

Which brings us back to Ronald Reagan and the Berlin Wall.

The reason Reagan is revered today as a great American president, is in fact a hero in places like Poland, is that he was totally unafraid to say exactly what he thought about exactly what he saw. Where others prattled on about containment and accepting the reality of Communism, Reagan saw victory -- as he once said: "we win, they lose."

This is called moral clarity. The policies that ended the Cold War in Reagan's case, and then brought down the Berlin Wall. But moral clarity is not exclusive to Ronald Reagan. It is not an artifact of the Cold War. It ended slavery in the United States. It defeated the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II. It is always available to be had -- if one has the moral courage that comes along with it, as Reagan most assuredly did.

It is an indispensable part of human knowledge. It is a necessity of life. When it's forgotten, when anyone -- the American military, a Hollywood director, the New York Times or Maureen Dowd -- believes they can run from it, ignore it or cater to its opposite -- trouble lies ahead. Big trouble.

The problem here is that the American military is infinitely more important to both America and the world than a Hollywood movie or the New York Times or a Dowd column.

Our physical safety depends on it.

There is no room for this kind of political correctness in the American military.

Too many brave men and women have their lives on the line for the rest of us every single hour of every single day, and their lives, as has just been terribly illustrated, depend on the clear-sighted judgment of their colleagues and superiors.

Is it hard to stand up for this kind of moral clarity, to be unpopular for saying the politically incorrect or what the so-called smart set believes is unfashionable?

Yes.

It wasn't always easy for Reagan, who was continually mocked as a simpleton for saying such things. He was a sitting President of the United States and wanted to say four little words, as Tony Dolan recalls. And all hell broke loose in the American governmental bureaucracy to try and keep him from saying those words. But he persevered. He was determined to say those words -- and he did. (And, by the way, in the insider history of White House intramurals Peter Robinson and Tony Dolan get a special gold medal.)

The Reagan lesson for the rest of us is that we can't afford to let this kind of thing intimidate -- whether we're making movies or publishing papers or writing columns or anything else.

Particularly if we are running the United States military.

There are ducks out there. They look like ducks, walk like ducks, they quack like ducks. Nidal Malik Hasan -- whether he was alone or hanging out with a flock of other ducks -- was still a duck.

Ronald Reagan knew a duck when he saw one. The Berlin Wall was a duck.

And now it isn't.

The rest of us can learn from that.

Bursting the Economist's Population Bubble

Joseph Meaney — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:07:00 -0500

The Economist magazine's cover story for October 31, 2009 "Falling fertility: How the population problem is solving itself," is notable both for its eminently sane rebuke of population control extremists, and for its nearly unqualified optimism with regard to plummeting fertility rates in the developing world.

The unsigned article posits that since economic prosperity tends to correlate with lower birth rates, the move toward replacement and below-replacement level fertility in the developing world actually bodes well both for them and for us. What the author calls a demographic/economic "Goldilocks moment" is a boon because with fewer children women are empowered to advance in education and work outside the home, there are fewer net dependents on society's tab, and the rapid population growth and the commensurate environmental damage that so concerns neo-Malthusians is curtailed.

Oddly, the article makes only a passing mention of the fact that "eventually developing countries will face the same problems of ageing as Europe and Japan." Eventually may be coming very quickly indeed, especially since in the Economist's own words, "what took place in Britain over 130 years (1800-1930) [a near-halving of fertility rates] took place in South Korea over just 20 (1965-85)."

What The Economist calls a "boon" for the developing world is more akin to a bubble, as in the recent housing bubble in the United States. Below replacement fertility which appears to come with economic prosperity will likely have even more devastating consequences for the developing world in a few short years than it will have in the rich nations. The economies of poorer countries will not be cushioned by foreign workers willing to come and work for low wages as currently happens in aging industrialized nations. Pensions (in the rare cases that they exist), health care and other forms of social security are even more likely to be woefully underfunded in countries with no tradition of government-supplied support for the elderly.

It will be no picnic in the rich countries either. In Japan, the "pop" of their supposedly optimal economic/demographic ratio now rings in the country's ears like a bomb blast: its leaders are in a panic over what to do with a population that has not stabilized at replacement level, but is falling precipitously.

The article correctly refers to the fact that the United States is the only developed nation that has raised its fertility rate above the replacement level after falling below it. Some European nations have seen slight increases in their childbearing by dint of enormous social spending, but not nearly enough to stave off rapid ageing and a population crash in coming years. And more fiscally conservative leaders are now looking for ways to roll back the massive social entitlements that they rightly see cannot be sustained as fewer workers are born into the economy to pay for them.

Russia is the proverbial canary in the coal mine of below replacement fertility demography. This nation's mounting losses numbered 6,622,000 inhabitants just in the period 1992-2006 despite increasingly frantic efforts by their government. Population losses as high as 20% or more are already "programmed in" for the next few decades in Japan, Germany, Italy and many others thanks to longstanding below replacement fertility. The fact that the remaining inhabitants in these countries will be disproportionately elderly shall only serve to perpetuate the crisis until long after fertility rises above replacement levels again.

The subtitle of the Economist's article is exactly wrong. The population problem is not solving itself. Neo-Malthusian overpopulation ideologues have dominated the public discourse and the policy arena for decades, and they achieved their objectives. In half of the world the next generation will not replace their parents. Human suffering on a massive scale in graying societies is sure to follow as many of these countries have generous social programs; programs which are unsustainable without a growing population and commensurate increasing tax base.

It is past time to embrace more responsible approaches to the current demographic situation of the world, including a complete reversal of the wrongheaded anti-fertility mindset of the last four decades. The Economist rightly chastises Green radicals who increasingly call for draconian population control measures like those which have wreaked havoc on China. But the magazine errs in only considering what they see as the economic boom which tends to follow plummeting fertility rates. It is wise to consider readily available evidence that there is no reason to believe that declining fertility is a boon for Africa any more than it is now considered one in Russia and Japan.

Children are not the source of our problems. More than ever before, they are the irreplaceable resource to heal our world.

Czars Along the Potomac

Frank Schell — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:07:00 -0500

All along the Potomac, we now observe an array of potentates not seen since the days of imperial Europe. Were they to stand side by side, they would equal the width of a U.S. Navy destroyer. These government chieftains, now loosely known as czars, are so numerous as to almost constitute a shadow government. A visitor to our country might ask if the Russian empire has been resurrected and Constantinople is being threatened again.

These czars have been quietly and purposefully appointed while the American people were looking the other way -- at Afghanistan, health care, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, missile defenses in Europe, and outrage over bailouts and executive pay -- at things that matter. There are reportedly thirty-two and possibly more to come, with ten evidently reporting directly to President Obama, according to media sources. To be fair, there were numerous czars in the previous Administration, and some positions are holdovers. But these appointments present many questions, and the czars of President Obama seem to have come under more scrutiny than those of President Bush.

Because these czars are dedicated to many different things, we must wonder how the President can possibly manage, guide, and yes, mentor so many of them -- especially when his cabinet already comprises fifteen federal departments, and there are numerous federal agencies whose directors are appointed by the President. Even czars need nurturing.

There is also the disturbing question of why someone would now wish to serve in that cabinet, when an array of czars, festooned with the accoutrements of power, has the ability to countermand, intimidate, undercut and shadow -- furtively watching cabinet members do their work on both sides of the Potomac -- even as they sip Evian or French roast at Starbucks. And why would the President even bother to have a cabinet, when he can get a quick reading on a crisis from a czar?

In specific terms, we have the potential confusion over responsibilities that is an auditor's dream: there is a car czar and an auto recovery czar. One wonders how they decide who gets to read Car and Driver first -- or listen to Jan and Dean. There are separate czars for science and technology even though one can drive the other. Having an information czar further confuses information with information technology, making it hard to keep passwords straight. The possible appointment of a cyber czar will only add chaos to the mix. The existence of a faith-based czar suggests that agnostics and atheists are disenfranchised. A czar for the Great Lakes means that other freshwater sources, and algae, are being ignored.

The weapons czar must be tripping over the WMD czar, and California gets attention with a California water czar, while other western states must remain parched. Sudan is singled out for a czar, suggesting that all dysfunctional states should have one, including Somalia and Illinois. Interestingly, there is a green jobs czar but not an employment czar, implying that trendy, switched on workers will receive sponsorship, but not those toiling for decades in basic industries such as concrete, steel and glass. Further, a health insurance czar may reportedly be added, obscuring the control of the health czarina.

The fact that there are so few czarinas in the lineup tells us that much of our work force is not engaged and that we are an underperforming country -- with much GDP upside. There is also the disturbing question of whether the pay czar, like the policeman, is actually your friend. The existence of an urban affairs czar says that we have forgotten about the farmer and the need to eat. The government performance czar, a position bound to make some people smile, seems on a collision course with the economic czar, stimulus accountability czar, TARP czar, numerous cabinet members, advisers, and members of Congress.

Not all czars are equal of course, as some report to cabinet or other senior officials. But in view of the proliferation of czarist positions, it might be wise to appoint a czar of czars who will manage the affairs of other czars and critique their performance -- ideally 24/7, using cyclical 360 feedback, or 720 just to be sure. The number of questions raised by this pool of czarist talent might also suggest that a questions czar be appointed, whose principal qualifications would be inquisitiveness and the ability to poke around with a stick.

Sometimes we learn more about a country by the czars they do not have: there is no czar for combating narcissism and there is no stiff upper lip czar. Nor is there a czar to prevent grandstanding and empty posturing by Congress.

Lou Dobbs Leaving CNN

W. James Antle, III — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:10:00 -0500

Jeff will be one of the last people to get the opportunity to appear on Dobbs' show. CNN has announced that Lou Dobbs is leaving the network. CNN's story suggests that Dobbs is leaving on his own to pursue a more activist role on the issues that he has been covering, like immigration and the economy. We'll learn later whether that's the whole story or if the silence-Dobbs campaign Jeff Lord has been covering for us might have had some success. Dobbs was rumored to be considering a third-party presidential bid in 2008. He was the last of the original anchors still working at the network.

Jeff Lord on Lou Dobbs

Wlady Pleszczynski — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:46:00 -0500

Congrats and thanks to Jeff Lord for his boffo six-minute appearance (7:37-7:43 PM ET) on CNN's Lou Dobbs this evening, to discuss his recent columns exposing the efforts of his church and others in the "So We Might See" coalition to silence right-wing media. We'll post a link to the segment as soon as it's available.

UPDATE: Surely, it's just a coincidence, but Jeff's appearance came on what's turned out to be Lou Dobbs' final broadcast on CNN.

Big Pharma's Good Deal at America's Expense

Doug Bandow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:17:00 -0500

In 1993 and 1994 the pharmaceutical industry fought against nationalized health care. This time Big Pharma cut itself a deal--offering a bit of a discount in return for a big increase in insurance coverage and thus the number of pills expected to be sold. As a result, the pharmaceutical industry has become one of the strongest proponents of "reform."

And Big Pharma's financial reward is likely to be large.

Observes Jonathan Cohn:

Critics have complained that a drug industry got a sweetheart deal when it struck a bargain with the White House and Senate Finance Committee over health care reform.

There's new reason to think those critics were right.

It comes from an October forecast by IMS Health, a respected global research and consulting firm. The report, which IMS distributed to clients and which a source provided, projects that the drug industry will see average annual growth of 3.5 percent between 2008 and 2013.

Back in March, IMS had projected no growth at all during that same five-year stretch. In fact, it projected the drug business would actually contract slightly--with negative annual growth of 0.01 percent.

What changed? A major factor, according to IMS, was the emerging details of health care reform.

It is yet another example of how the greatest enemies of capitalism tend to be the capitalists.

Only time will tell, however, whether proponents of government control will live up to the deal. Or whether they will turn on the industry as a convenient source of financial savings when spending skyrockets, as it will. If that happens, the rest of us should wave cheerfully as Big Pharma finds itself transported to the political guillotine.

Veterans Day

W. James Antle, III — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:07:00 -0500

At the church I attend in northern Virginia, there is a tradition on the Sundays before Memorial Day and Veterans Day. The organist plays the hymns of each service branch and people stand when they hear their branch's hymn play. The people who rise from their pews are usually veterans. Some of them are currently serving. Others are family members of the fallen.

There are a lot of ways, both large and small, to pay tribute to those who have worn this country's uniform and served in harm's way. Veterans Day is as good as any to find them, in order to thank those who have served in our military and remember those who have given the ultimate sacrifice.

Not Just Rasmussen

Philip Klein — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:06:00 -0500

Below, Doug noted the Rasmussen poll giving an edge to the GOP on the Congressional ballot. But what's noteworthy is that the findings aren't isolated to Rasmussen, which tends to produce poll results more favorable to Republicans. The Gallup poll now gives Republicans a 4-point edge, which includes a 22-point lead among independent voters.

Gallup also adds some historical context:

Since Gallup regularly began using the generic ballot to measure registered voters' preferences for the House of Representatives in 1950, it has been rare for Republicans to have an advantage over Democrats. This is likely because more Americans usually identify as Democrats than as Republicans, but Republicans can offset this typical Democratic advantage in preferences with greater turnout on Election Day. Most of the prior Republican registered-voter leads on the generic ballot in Gallup polling occurred in 1994 and 2002, two strong years for the GOP.

UPDATE: Pew is out with a survey showing anti-incumbent sentiment "among the most negative in two decades of Pew Research surveys. Other low points were during the 1994 and 2006 election cycles, when the party in power suffered large losses in midterm elections." The survey also found Republicans have a "sizable" enthusiasm advantage.

Another Reason for Democrats to Vote No on Obamacare

Doug Bandow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:52:00 -0500

It's bad news for Democratic congressional candidates. According to Rasmussen Reports:

Republican candidates have stretched their lead over Democrats to six points in the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 43% would vote for their district's Republican congressional candidate while 37% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. Republicans have held the lead for over four months now.

Voters not affiliated with either party continue to heavily favor Republicans, 43% to 20%.

A vote for nationalizing the health care system could easily be the final nail in the political coffin for a number of moderate Democratic legislators.

Daily Must-Reads

Brian O'Connell — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:39:00 -0500

Male Columbia professor allegedly punches female Columbia employee in the face while debating race issues (New York Magazine)
Rio, a city supposedly better than Chicago with respect to the Olympics, gets its electricity back after widespread power outages (Associated Press)
Taliban praises Fort Hood attack (Telegraph.uk)
The 1970s we can believe in? Democrats in California seem stuck with Jerry Brown (MSNBC)

Pass Anything

W. James Antle, III — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:43:00 -0500

That was Bill Clinton's advice to Senate Democrats yesterday. He told them, "The worst thing to do is nothing. It's not important to be perfect here. It's important to act." This mentality is a perfect description of what is wrong with the political class -- the appearance of action always takes precedence over ensuring that the actions being undertaken are wise or just.

Fifteen years later, Clinton has never paused to consider that the Democrats might not have lost control of Congress because they failed to pass his health care reform bill. There is a case to be made they lost in no small part because the bill in question was such a federal power grab. Clinton is asking Senate Democrats to risk their seats based his memories of 1994, but not all of them will go along. Consider Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), for example.

America's European Welfare Queens

Doug Bandow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:59:00 -0500

The U.S. has created a defense dole in Europe, allowing the Europeans to spend their money on lavish social welfare benefits rather than military forces. Explains the Greek ambassador to the U.S. to the Washington Times:

NATO members' reluctance to assume a larger role in Afghanistan is partly the legacy of U.S. military protection, which allowed Europeans to stress social programs over defense for decades, the Greek ambassador to the United States said.

"For 40 years, you have a system [of] not bothering about military, security and stability expenses," Vassilis Kaskarelis told editors and reporters of The Washington Times. "Because these issues were handled by the United States after World War II ... everybody was happy."

Everybody is no longer happy. It's time to adopt some international welfare reform and get the cheats off of the backs of American taxpayers.

Why a Jobless Recovery?

Doug Bandow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Government economic meddling doesn't help. University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan explains how government gets in the way:

Labor market distortions are a collection of factors that hold back employment, even when employees are creating a lot of value.

These distortions include difficulties in job search, income taxes, minimum-wage laws and incentives that are eroded by means-tested government benefits (determining whether someone should receive benefits based on things like the person's income). These factors can be difficult to quantify individually, but we know from the poor employment results that at least some of them are important.

Labor market distortions have gotten progressively worse during this recession. The federal minimum wage, for example, was increased once shortly before the recession began, a second time in the summer of 2008, and yet again this summer. The housing collapse has also had multiple harmful effects, such as impeding families who might want to move out of some of the hardest-hit regions toward areas where the economy is doing better.

These types of factors can make a bad labor market much worse.

Some distortions may at least stabilize in coming months, but he adds:

Congress appears poised to further erode incentives to earn income as an accidental byproduct of its plans reforming health care. Nor do consumers seem to be spending in anticipation of a grand employment recovery.

Rather a helping hand we have the unhelpful foot of government, giving job-seekers an unpleasant kick in the rear.

Who Is this Crazy Four Percent?

Doug Bandow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:06:00 -0500

The other 19 percent aren't looking too bright either.

According to Rasmussen Reports:

Some folks may be surprised that the number is this high, but only four percent (4%) of U.S. voters say most politicians keep their campaign promises.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 76% say the majority of politicians do not keep the promises they make on the campaign trail. Nearly one-out-of five voters (19%) aren't sure.

Maybe the four percent represent the population of America's mental hospitals.

The Day Ahead: November 11

Maia Lazar — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:30:00 -0500

Today on the main site:

The Man Who Despises America, by Mark Hyman

On Speed, by Eric Peters

The Absolutely Worst Bill Ever, by Peter Ferrara

Fear of the Mother, by Shawn Macomber

We Win, They Lose, by Lisa Fabrizio

Antichrist, by James Bowman

Plus more...

Comment of the day:

Reader Philhoey on The Bigger Picture:

I remember flying over the Wall in the summer of 1970 when landing at Temphof. Later, I walked up as close to the wall as sanity permitted in those days. Somehow, I feel Mr. Obama has led a very sheltered life and has no understanding of what really went on during that period of time. There is an old saying that, 'What you do speaks so loudly, that I cannot hear a word you are saying." If the current Government in Washington continues on for the next three years as they have for the first year, then Jimmy Carter will no longer be on the bottom rung of the worst US Presidents.

What to watch for:

Firstly, Happy Veterans Day.

Iran will execute a Kurdish political prisoner.

France-Germany ties fade.

Anita Dunn is stepping down as White House Communications Chief.

Good news: Googie will offer free airport Wifi.

The U.S Assistant Secretary of State has told the media recently that a U.S delegation is North Korea bound sometime in the near future.

Placebo power and faith have some impact on cures.

According to this survey, 5% of Americans polled said they were planning to buy a house, and the location would most likely be in the south or the west.

Game of the week: Patriots vs. Colts

Terrorism can be kitschy, according to Daniel Williams of the New York Times.

NATO hopes to boost training teams in Afghanistan.

Pres. Obama will consider different options for Afghanistan.

Tuesday's best:

Hollywood's Health Care Hypocrisy

Philip Klein — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:33:00 -0500

Back in September, Hollywood celebrities made a web ad mocking greedy insurance executives as part of a pitch for a government takeover of the health care system. But as it turns out, their commitment to reform has its limits. Variety reports:

The presidents of SAG, the WGA and the Hollywood Teamsters have asked Congress to back off a proposed tax that would hit the "Cadillac" health plans that cover members of their unions....

"We applaud your efforts to expand affordable health care coverage to more Americans and to reform the health insurance industry," the letter from the guild toppers said. "However, we are deeply troubled by the provisions of the bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee that would levy a new tax against so-called 'Cadillac plans.' The individual unions and guilds of the entertainment industry have struggled and sacrificed for decades to negotiate and defend their own Taft-Hartley health insurance plans."

So in other words, Hollywood actors and writers are perfectly okay with a national health care scheme that would tax middle-class Americans who don't purchase a govenment- approved insurance policy. But once the tax affects their precious "Cadillac" plans, it's a bridge too far.

Tea Partiers Claim A Scalp...

Shawn Macomber — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:14:00 -0500

...in Arizona.

The Pro-Choice Pushback

W. James Antle, III — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:46:00 -0500

Despite my skepticism that the Planned Parenthood wing of the Democratic Party will go away quietly, this Dana Goldstein piece suggests it won't be very strong. The Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus won't even release the names of the members who will supposedly vote against the bill to kill the Stupak amendment.