Maggie's Farm

The bare majority of the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare on grounds that stretch their imagination. The core of their decision allowing the individual mandate to buy insurance is that what is clearly written in the law as a penalty, argued to be allowed as justified under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, they choose to instead treat as a tax within Congress’ authority. Opinion writer Chief Justice Roberts said, “The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a ‘fairly possible’ one.” WTF! As said at National Review,

Chief John Roberts may have flinched from doing what his fellow Republican-appointed justices were willing to do — strike down the individual mandate as a violation of the Commerce Clause — but he did so in a clever way. He resurrected an earlier argument, one the Obama administration had mostly abandoned, that the mandate was really a tax rather than a regulation.... the only way the administration prevailed was to have Obama’s main legislative accomplishment redefined as one of the largest middle-class tax increases in the history of the country.

Six Justices of the Supreme Court kicked the ball back to the court of Congress and the Defense Department to save stolen honor. The six Justices' decision this morning holds that the Stolen Valor Act exceeds the bounds of permissible government restrictions on speech. The decision is here. The six Justices, however, lay out how Congress may rewrite the Stolen Valor Act to make it acceptable to the Court and to strengthen the ability to expose frauds.

What the US needs is bipartisan health care reforms, not the partisan ram-down that we’ve experienced with Obamacare.

Everyone has a prediction for tomorrow’s Supreme Court decisions on Obamacare, and no one has a clue, including President Obama who has three different speeches prepared for different decisions. Regardless of the decisions, all except those addicted to government-run and single-payer medical care recognize that either Obamacare will need serious revisions or that we will need to start from scratch.

Below is an op-ed that I had in the San Diego Union-Tribune with proposals based on my decades of experience and credentials in health insurance. Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree.  

No GOP ideas? Try these 10

I lay on the grass, counting tweety-birds, after falling off the top step of a 12-foot ladder while trimming a tree in the front yard, my 12-year old son’s concerned face looking down at me. My father, who could and did do anything he set his mind to, until the day he died in his eighties, also stared down at me. At 64, I had something important to live up to and pass on to my son, so I forced myself to get up, smile, and say, “let’s get back to work” (ibuprofen to secretly follow later).

“NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP reads a plaque behind Dole.” So ends a respectful interview, “Great American”, with 88-year old former Senator Bob Dole by an otherwise snarky toward Republicans young lady from GQ. The young lady can't let go of the diminished physical condition of the man before her, but can't hide the respect and awe at his life. From athelete to crippled veteran to candidate for President to helping today's war wounded, Bob Dole gave all of himself, which stands tall before her.

As it so happens, this morning brought home that message from several other accomplished old men interviewed by my local newspaper, stirring me to talk about other old men and women with whom I spoke or chat with now on the phone. Their politics vary but they all came from impoverished roots here or abroad, are self-made, involved themselves fully in our national life. From my youth to now they share their anecdotes with their younger friend, from my callow days to me now at 64, as I sat or now sit figuratively enthralled at their feet listening.  In their twilight years, still, they never never never give up, regardless the challenge, price or risk.

It’s their sense of duty to things greater than themselves, their love of country, which has animated them from youth to old age, a sense of humility before the obligation to pass on a better, stronger, decent world in which the only limitations are those placed on self. From famous labor leaders and former communists or socialists to industrialists to globe-trotting journalists and diplomats to national political figures to best-selling artists, authors and academics, all of their eyes sparkle and inspire as their self-effacing words did and do inspire me.

I met Bob Dole in the early 1970s, at the height of his political power, as he took the time to encourage me. I met the others either at the height of their successes or after. They took time to talk with me, answer my ignorant questions with enlightenment, and kick me in the ass when I dithered or wandered. I could list their names and the lessons they shared with me, but that would fill another several thousand words to even be very brief.

After years of hectoring him to write down some of his encounters with the famous and formative people who he met as an international journalist from the last days of WWII to now, a friend and mentor is now doing so. I hope to help him get it published. He laughed at me for constantly needling him to set his anecdotes down, saying no one cares anymore. I find myself saying similar to younger friends who similarly needle me to write it down. Maybe I will...if I make it to my eighties. You probably had or have similar people in your life. They need to be reminded that someone cares and many more will care if you help their lessons to be remembered by passing it on.

Special Operations Speaks website has received 750,000 hits in just two weeks. If you know anything about blogging, that's simply incredible sightings. If you know anything about how President Obama's re-election campaign has exposed secret operations, tactics, intel, and allies, in order to make Obama look like something else than a foreign affairs wimp, then please go to the site and sign its petition. Meanwhile, there's lots more coming. Stand by, Obama, incoming.

 Maggie's Farm readers are frequent guests of Bird Dog on his visits to the arts in Manhattan. I was shocked, really, actually shocked, when Bird Dog told me he'd never been to Brooklyn. By itself, Brooklyn is the 4th largest city in the United States. About 10% of Americans' families trace their families to originally being Brooklynites. Many of America's most famous celebrities hailed from Brooklyn, ranging from the early Dutch settlers who also bought Manhattan for trinkets and Thomas Paine, John Greeleaf Whittier and Walt Whitman, Mae West and W.C. Fields, George Gershwin and Aaron Copeland, John Steinbeck and Joseph Heller, Woody Allen and Barbara Streisand (my sister was at Erasmus Hall High School with her, Erasmus having the highest number of Westinghouse and National Merit Scholars in the nation), Lena Horne and W.E.B. DuBois, Gil Hodges and Sandy Koufax, to .........the list goes on and on. It contains top flight colleges. Prospect Park rivals Central Park. Its restaurants and arts are world class. There are far more beautiful brownstones than anywhere else. And, then, to top it off, its beaches have been New York's summer playgrounds and winter strolls for generations. One of those beach communities, next to Coney Island, is Brighton Beach. My grandmother and, later, my mother, in their old age lived in Brighton Beach highrises looking over the Atlantic and if you craned your neck you could see the Statue of Liberty. Here's a terrific photo homage to the Brooklyn that I grew up in. The video below is about Brighton Beach today, a thriving enclave for Russian emigres. They settled there because most were Jewish and the area was Jewish.

Bird Dog, doggit, you've got to get thee to Brooklyn, often. Manhattan midtown is where people not from New York City hang out, missing the real New York City.   

 

As soon as you come into Worcester County, Maryland from Virginia this sign will appear.

My post at The New Criterion is up, “Judaic Studies and Western Civilization”. Judaic Studies in one form or another for centuries was a core subject in college curriculum, in order to best understand the West's Judeo-Christian civilization. Now, Judaic Studies has faded from centrality, as has much of the focus on Western civilization. That focus in Judaic Studies is what is needed to reinvigorate student interest and to keep Judaic Studies from degenerating into the sort of PCism and irrelevancy of other studies departments.

While visiting The New Criterion and enjoying its always interesting literacy, I encourage you to click its Donation page.

For those who refuse to click over to read my piece at The New Criterion, it is also below the fold.

The simple truth why there are so many national security leaks is that the prime actors -- government officials, Congress, the media -- want them or are unwilling to stop them.

The current spate of serious leaks is not the first time this has occurred. There were major leaks during the Bush administration damaging to the post-9/11 ramping up of anti-terror activities, with no punishment of the offenders. By comparison, the leak of Valerie Plame’s not-so-secret CIA employment became the subject of a Special Prosecutor, and abuse of that process. These two examples revealed that prosecution and follow-up on leaks depended on whose political position was furthered and whose political ox was gored rather than the actual damage to national security.

There are laws on the books, federal agencies with the responsibility, and contracts signed that can be used to find and bring leakers to justice. Justifiably, national security professionals and front-line Special Operations forces have protested the lack of enforcement. Self-servingly, media has demanded even more impunity via a federal shield law. Partisanly, Congress has abdicated its oversight role. Avoidingly, Presidents have mouthed platitudes or claimed innocence.

The abdication of responsibility by those responsible or who should be deeply concerned about national security during the Bush administration has been taken to blatant new depths by the Obama administration’s re-election campaign.

The obvious truth is that these and other leaks are rarely the result of independent investigative reporting. Rather, someone in power secretly goes to the media with the damaging details, either to obstruct policy or to garner support for their own political ends.

Former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey writes...

 

Ole! Oy Vey!

Most Americans do not remember the details of the Watergate charges and facts, if they ever knew them. Instead, the word Watergate has been used to villify President Nixon, most of what he stood for, and almost any scandal since is called a -gate. Fred Thompson was the Republican counsel on the Congressional Watergate Committee. In a look back that is important to read, Thompson reflects on the context, the charges, the findings and what the findings ignored. As the subtitle of the piece says, "Caricatures of the evil Nixon don’t help us learn how to counter abuses of power." Today, we still suffer, not just domestic breakins or coverups but the far worse wholesale usurpation of Congressional power by this President, the betrayal of allies, and the gross undermining of our national security. A taste of Thompson:

Today, the office of the president, along with the entire executive branch of government, grows with each administration, bringing less accountability and more opportunity for improper activity. Today, unelected bureaucrats tell states what they can and cannot do about the enforcement of their own well-established laws. Federal regulations run every aspect of American life, even as the Supreme Court regularly slaps them down. These actions on the part of the executive branch are not criminal, but neither were many of the arrogant and foolish things the Watergate crowd did. At issue here is not just a few bad individuals. At issue is the way power can be used and abused. Watergate was not the first time the darker side of human nature manifested itself, nor was it the last time.

Consider the issue of the inherent powers of the presidency, especially with regard to national security. It was activities in this area — before the crimes of Watergate took place — that are relevant and sometimes overlooked today.

What led to the Watergate cover-up was the fear that an investigation would reveal non-Watergate activities by the “plumbers’ unit” in the White House, which had been set up to “plug leaks,” among other things. Daniel Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1970, and the plumbers broke into the office of his psychiatrist to root out information about him. They wiretapped reporters, even White House aides. The list of their offenses is long.

Oh, and remember, millions of lives were lost to the communist takeover of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, once the Watergate reaction put a large Democrat majority in Congress.

Watch video to see how the Obama Administration treats former allies. House Church Christians are brutally repressed in Vietnam and hundreds of Christian prisoners rot in Vietnam's gulags and the Obama administration doesnt have the decency to mention them in their human rights reports.In fact for the FIRST TIME EVER - in 2012 the US State Department deleted ALL references to religious persecution in its Vietnam human rights reports, downplaying religious freedom and human rights in nothing but a cowardly display of betrayal.

 

 My son Gavin's Cub Scout Pack 774 worked their little butts off in April to collect food for the Community Resource Center's food bank. The Encinitas City Council just honored them last night, the first 6 1/2 minutes of this video. Give the Cubs a Urrragh!

 

 Via Tablet magazine, "Your Salsa Judía Playlist."

...as Eddie Palmieri told him, “You used Jewish musicians or you didn’t have a band!” And Tito Puente played bar mitzvahs....A bandleader and multi-instrumentalist, Harlow was referred to by the New York Times as “one of the most important figures in the history of salsa.”...

While in college, I bartendered at Brooklyn's St. George Hotel during huge Puerto Rican dance concerts (sweet smoke billowing from the bathrooms), listened to Puerto Rican music on the radio while cramming, and was fluent enough in Spanish to work in a store in a neighborhood with a large Puerto Rican population (rapid fire Spanish). Funny, they didn't look Jewish! -- BTW, Puerto Rican stew is the best, with tropical ingredients. Try it, you'll like it.  Ess up.

More good sounds at the Tablet link above.

 

 

The current Time magazine features “Hillary’s Little Startup: How the U.S. Is Using Technology to Aid Syria’s Rebels,” about “how Americans helped turn him [pseudonym] into a cyberwarrior.” Once again, the secrets of the United States are being deployed in President Obama’s re-election image making.

[L]ocal dissident leaders picked the former engineer to go abroad for even-more-sophisticated training in computer encryption, circumvention of government firewalls and secure use of mobile phones—courtesy of the U.S. State Department. The training has helped give the rebels the upper hand in one front in the battle against Syria’s President. Even as the Assad regime’s army crushes the opposition on the ground, the dictator has been losing the war online.

In the process, the Obama Administration has tiptoed across an invisible line. Washington has said it will not actively support the Syrian opposition in its bid to oust Assad. Officially, the U.S. says it abides by the U.N. process led by Kofi Annan and does not condone arms sales to opposition groups as long as there are U.N. observers in Syria. Nevertheless, as U.S. officials have revealed to Time, [emphasis added] the Obama Administration has been providing media-technology training and support to Syrian dissidents by way of small nonprofits like the Institute for War & Peace Reporting and Freedom House.

Note, as in so many of the credits that the Obama administration takes unto itself, the program started under President Bush, although Bush is not named in the Time article: “The program actually began four years ago with a different target: China.”

The Time reporter is interviewed by CNN:

CNN: What is the biggest challenge here as part of this program?

NEWTON-SMALL: I think the biggest challenge is certainly when I was talking to people, they were incredibly leery about [details] being kept secret, where the trainings are done being kept secret. And we had to change the names of all the dissidents we spoke with because obviously we don't want to put them at risk back at home.

And it's also getting over a stigma and people saying, "Well, because you're trained by the Americans, you're an American pawn." When, in fact, this training just enables them to show what they want to show. We're not coming to them with any kind of agenda. And America isn't saying, "We want you to promote American values here." They're just saying, "Here are the tools. You guys go and do whatever you want to do with it."

Some of those “tools” are revealed. The rebel users of those “tools” can now be labeled as American tools by the Syrian government, which undermines the rebel cyberwarriors.

Another screw security, screw those on the front-lines, leak from the Obama re-election administration.

 

Below is the post from two years ago. I haven't seen any recognition of today, Flag Day, in the media. Indeed, the provenance of Flag Day is under dispute. Is Flag Day a forgotten holiday? -- BTW, June 14, 2012 is the 237th birthday of the US Army. Go doggies!

Courtesy of the Romney campaign:

_______

My friend, retired Army Colonel Austin Bay, writes about the new organization Special Operations Speaks in Bay's current column distributed by Creators syndicate to newspapers across the country.

The message: A cadre of retired U.S. special operations personnel is fed up with leaks that compromise covert U.S. operations and imprison pro-American sympathizers. Their mission: stop the leaks by firing the leaker-in-chief. A former SEAL and commandant of the SEAL training center, retired U.S. Navy Capt. Larry Bailey, organized the group. I asked him, over the phone, why he formed it. He replied: "I'm pissed." Bailey knows the leaks put U.S. security and the lives of American spies and SEALS at risk, so he's fighting a political fight, seeded with his own money. He'll take donations, you bet. Yes, he expects dirty personal attacks impugning his motives.

Bailey and his shoestring SOS are Obama's worst election year nightmare — special ops guys who publicly question his leadership and judgment. Obama's most potent campaign tout is "I got bin Laden." With SOS in the mix, the potent tout suddenly sounds just a tad pathetic.

This morning, Bay emailed: "Your critics attack you because your very presence --enhanced by stellar military service records and demonstrated courage-- threatens their politically self-serving narrative." Welcome to 2004 redux.

According to Rasmussen's polling:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 73% of Likely U.S. Voters are at least somewhat concerned that the security leaks will compromise national security, with 40% who are Very Concerned. Twenty-five percent (25%) don’t have that concern, but that includes just three percent (3%) who are Not At All Concerned.

As in 2004, Obama administration leaks can sink his boat. See Leaks Could Sink Obama White House. 

PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Finally, my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions -- families, businesses, and the federal government.” (President Obama, Remarks, 3/3/10)

 

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Office of the Actuary, 6/12/12:

 

 

 

There are about 40-thousand Catholic priests in the US and about 220,000 parishes serving about 70+ million Catholics, over 20% of the US population. -- If not religious, skip to about 1:25 minutes.

My good friend Larry Bailey retired from the Navy in 1990 after a 27-year career as a SEAL, rising to Captain. Captain Bailey's most significant military assignment was as Commanding Officer of the Naval Special Warfare Center, where all Navy SEALS undergo basic and advanced training.

Bailey and others from across the spectrum of US special forces have banded together to form Special Operations Speaks. I'll let them speak for themselves:

Honorably discharged veterans of the Special Operations communities of all the Armed Services have organized an effort to elect Mitt Romney President of the United States. This group, “Special Operations Speaks,” or “SOS,” will be structured along quasi-military lines, with an umbrella organization coordinating the efforts of several subordinate Service-unique specialties. The Army will be represented by “Rangers Speak Out” and “Green Berets Speak Out;” the Navy by “SEALs Speak Out;” the Air Force by “Air Commandos Speak Out;” and the Marine Corps by “MARSOC Speaks out.”

SOS is configured as a “Super Political Action Committee” (Super PAC) that will enable it to exert maximum influence as an advocate for the election of Mitt Romney as President of the United States. Subsequent to the 2012 campaign, SOS will continue to exert pressure on behalf of the Special Operations community.

Of particular interest to SOS is the urgency of maintaining the level of secrecy that has heretofore been a hallmark of Special Operations. The recent leaking of highly classified information from the offices of the Commander-in-Chief himself clearly indicates the need to protect sensitive information from the public (and enemy’s) eye. SOS will educate the public and its representatives in the US Congress about this issue.

Until November 6, 2012, SOS will organize and execute operations designed to help elect Mitt Romney and to defeat Barack Hussein Obama.

There's a petition at the site for an investigation by the House Homeland Security Committee into who leaked the secret information about the SEAL raid that got bin Laden. Please sign up.

Also, rest assured that just as they defended us during their active duty, our special operations forces are still doing the job.

P.S.: Here's a 2007 interview by me with Larry Bailey, when he organized 40,000 in D.C. for a No Cut, No Run rally.

As in so many other cases, international media usually seeks out and features negative news about Israel or exaggerates it or treats it in a biased manner. So, too, on this issue.  There is a natural, and commendable, empathy for peoples in dire straits or whose experience, by large stretches of analogy, may be compared to other groups, like Hispanics or Blacks in the US, but that alone does not merit the one-sided coverage of this issue and the lack of facts and context.  That lack of context and partial facts has been the case with most of the reporting about African illegal immigrants in Israel.

As in the US, it is difficult to count the number of illegal immigrants, so hard numbers of illegal African immigrants in Israel are estimates.  According to Wikipedia, there were about 26-thousand in July 2010 and 55-thousand in January 2012. Estimates of new arrivals are about 1-thousand a month, which would bring the June 2012 number to over 60-thousand.  Two-thirds are estimated to be in south Tel Aviv and another 20% in the resort city of Eilat. Some other estimates of illegal African immigrants in Israel are higher. This is a lower percentage of illegal immigrants than in the US, but Israel should not wait until it is as large a problem as here.  There are also about 150,000 Black Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Black Ethiopian Jews were brought in by Israel.

As in the US, there is certainly racism against Blacks within Israel.  There is also acceptance and substantial aid within Israel, as in the US for its illegal immigrants.

Minding The Campus blog, from the Manhattan Institute, is one of the preeminent venues for discussing issues in higher education. Today, my third annual shock at what is presented as required reading for incoming students at my alma mater and at many other colleges appears at Minding The Campus: Working Hard to Convince Freshmen They Are Victims.

I encourage you to click the link and go to the Minding The Campus website to read it, because you will find a site worthy of a daily visit.

Otherwise, the column is below the fold: