We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
GOT THOUGHTS ON THE HEALTHCARE PROPOSAL? Call your Senators and Congressperson. (202) 224-3121, or — better — call the local office in your town. Complaining on the Internet isn’t enough . . . .
The main reason Americans spend more on medical care is not about life expectancy - it's about two simple things: quality of life, and the trial lawyers.
(American life expectancy stats are also pulled down by the numbers of premies and babies with terrible abnormalities we attempt to save.)
First, in how many countries can you get a shoulder repair or a new knee or hip in a week? Annual screening colonoscopies and mammographies? Guys with advanced ALS on home ventilators? And how many countries generate the new treatments that the US does? (We do 90% of them. For a recent dramatic example, see this via Insty.) We all wear out and die, but there aren't many countries where my 83 year-old Mom would be playing tennis with her new shoulder, hips and knee, her synthetic mitral heart valve, her pacemaker, her cataract surgeries and her hormone replacement. She calls herself The Bionic Mom. She is willing to die, but while she is alive she wants to live: play tennis, work in her gardens, go to the ballet, sit on her volunteer boards, cook for my Dad, and go to Europe every August. What is that worth in $ terms? Of course they are on Medicare, but they would gladly buy private insurance instead.
Re the trial lawyers, where else in the world do you get a $7000 work-up if you walk into the ER with a migraine headache? Where else in the world do obstetricians pay $350,000/year in malpractice insurance because the law permits suits for bad results, not just practice errors (like amputating the wrong leg)?
If something needs fixing, it's the latter, not the former.
The president characteristically denies that he is doing what he is doing — putting the nation on a path to an outcome he considers desirable — just as he denies any intention of running General Motors. Nevertheless, the unifying constant of his domestic policies — their connecting thread — is that they advance the Democrats’ dependency agenda. The party of government aims to make Americans more equal by making them equally dependent on government for more and more things.
The main question of the day is, can Americans afford NOT to adopt socialized healthcare? Everyone knows that the individual will never take the necessary steps; it is up to the State to do it for us. In a vital decision like this, do we really need to depend on the vote of emotionally underdeveloped conservative segments? Those incapable or unwilling to acknowledge the moral superiority and the ethical progress of the more socially advanced Europeans, do not deserve a right to vote. Voting rights shall be taken away from them, as well as their medicine. One cannot expect a society to prolong the lives of its useless, degraded elements at its own peril.
I need to squeeze in here somewhere the fact that members of Congress and the government would keep their own generous private medical plans, and not be subject to government control.
Because of the deadweight costs of taxation itself, costs that are not included in the propaganda we are increasingly being fed, we might well find that there is in fact, overall, no saving of money.
President George W. Bush concocted the connection between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein to justify the Iraq invasion. Now President Barack Obama is concocting an equally fantastical theory to justify a de facto government takeover of health care.
Ms. Feinberg recalled one 15-year-old boy from Long Island who told her: “Oh, we all hated Holden in my class. We just wanted to tell him, ‘Shut up and take your Prozac.’ ”
"World cooling is here to stay and the new round of climate alarmism just announced by UK Government ministers and the Met Office of more extreme weather and warming in coming decades driven by mankind has no merit and is defied by the facts and front-line science”, said Piers as his forecast from three weeks ahead was confirmed for the formation of the first East Pacific typhoon of the season off Mexico.
What most Americans identify as government "welfare" are payments to single mothers, food stamps and (perhaps) Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor. But that's not the half of it. Since 1960, government has changed radically. Then, 52 percent of federal spending went for defense, 26 percent for "payments for individuals" -- the welfare state. By 2008, 61 percent consisted of "payments for individuals," 21 percent for defense.
Social Security and Medicare -- programs for the elderly -- represented the lion's share: $1 trillion in 2008. Most Americans don't consider these programs "welfare," but they are. Benefits are paid mainly by present taxes; there's little "saving" for future benefits; Congress can alter benefits whenever it wants. If that's not welfare, what would be?
Pressures on private and public welfare won't abate.
This is what Tait Trussell of the Acton Institute wrote in an article just last week:
“[I]n just three years from now, Social Security and Medicare will need one out of ten tax dollars, John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis points out. And just 11 years in the future—by 2020—Uncle Sam will need one out of every four income tax dollars to fund these programs for seniors. If we continue with all other government programs in operation today and raise the taxes to pay for Medicare, plus Medicaid—the health program for low-income folks—the Congressional Budget Office estimates a middle-income family by the middle of this century will have to pay two-thirds of its total income in federal taxes.”
This situation defines the term “unsustainable.” Why is not President Obama proposing a “fix” to avert this approaching catastrophe? Curiously enough, not only he is unconcerned, but he seems to think that the unviable entitlements constitute some sort of achievement. This is what he said about them in Chicago:
Presidents have called for health care reform for nearly a century…But while significant individual reforms have been made – such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program – efforts at comprehensive reform that covers everyone and brings down costs have largely failed.
The president apparently believes that these failing federal programs already represent reform and that all that is needed now is to create something that would quickly become the mother of all entitlements – governmentally guaranteed universal healthcare.
Americans should really worry when their president fails to recognize the real dilemma we face as a nation: Either we reform entitlements or we let them drag us down the dark pit of insolvency.
They've been lying about the number of people without health care. They've been lying about whether the public is satisfied with health care. They've been lying about every aspect of health care.
They unleashed the slip-and-fall lawyers on the medical system, causing untold higher costs for medical practitioners. They've attacked the health care system relentlessly, driving up costs just like they've attacked the energy industry and the automakers.
And even when they have complete monopolistic control of a system, like the educational system in America, they want more control. It's never enough. They want more money, more regulations. More. They need to "invest". They need to raise taxes. They need to repress. They need to compel.
Because the Statist cannot make the imperfect perfect, even though he says he can. The Statist is more imperfect than anyone else.
Related: Labour is like our Dems: their perennial strategy is to make as many as possible dependent on the government. That way, they hope to have jobs and power forever. Via TimesOnline:
Labour lags behind on almost every indicator, save one: it is still regarded as the party more likely to protect public services. An Guardian/ICM poll last week revealed that 48% of voters think Labour will protect services, whereas 46% think the Conservatives will do the same. Labour has a positive score of 1%, ie, more people believe Labour will protect services than harm them. The Tories have a deficit of 3%.
An architect of new Labour whispers in my ear, and Gordon’s, that people do not yet have full confidence in the Tories. The position of Cameron is much better than that of his party; the opposition’s lead is shallow. “If you do not trust them on the public services,” he says, “it’s a reflection of a deeper distrust that they have not really changed.”
I have tried pointing Americans at the British example to show them what an appalling idea it is to have the state directing any industry, let alone medical care. But alas it is very hard to overcome that special kind of insular American optimism that does not think what happens in another advanced first world nation can teach them anything, because in the USA things will be different.
DON SURBER: Don’t Become West Virginia. “If poverty is so good, then why do we have anti-poverty programs? Using her logic, we should have pro-poverty programs.” Well, that’s pretty much what’s going on right now . . . .
We said we would not make fun of Michelle O's garden, but this is ridiculous. Didn't they just plant the seeds a few weeks ago? I want to know what magic fertilizer they use. Potemkin garden? Or is this a loaves and fishes deal?
Superb on-the-ground report in the second half. Read it all. When people bleed for tyranny, we feel ill. When they bleed for freedom, we are inspired - and we hope we could be so bold ourselves.
Continual Iran updates at Gateway, whence the photo. We wish the best for all of the brave and lovely women in Iran's Lipstick Revolution.
Related: Driscoll notes that great powers always have a dog in the fight, because a posture of evenhanded neutrality always has non-neutral effects.
Related: Ace rightly notes that the O's refusal to stand strong with the protesters can damage future relations with Iran. The man is a pussy, a Prom Queen. The only things he gets tough with are Republicans, FOX news, and our international allies and friends like the Brits and Israel.
Obama himself gave us ample warning of his reckless grandiosity during the 2008 campaign. So we can’t say we weren’t warned. The situation has only gotten worse in the months since his inauguration. And there’s 3.5 years to go. Help!
Related: Medical care plan would not apply to Congress! Via Blue Crab:
From what is known about the tippity-top secret bill at this point, it appears that it is bad enough that Congress will not allow it to apply to themselves or the rest of the Federal government.
That should tell you all you need to know about this bill.
I agree that the "war against drugs" failed. It's been going on since Nixon. All it does is raise the cost of drugs and increase the crime. It's past time to re-think it. It's too bad that drug users generally have little interest in getting over it, but that's reality.
What the late lamented Milton Friedman said about medical care costs. He makes a number of excellent points, including that it is employee insurance that drives the prices up. h/t, Mankiw
The looming middle class tax increases. Even some Dems are waking up, like drunks after a bad binge. They have been drinking on our nickel since January.
The New York Times, otherwise known as the Grey Lady, might more appropriately be known as Obama’s Shady Lady.Believe its poll and get a Times Square disease.
Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind [72%] one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
BUT, according to the actual poll data, of the 73% of respondents who said they voted in 2008 only 34% voted for McCain and 66% for Obama.The actual vote was 46% (corrected) McCain.So, 29% of McCain voters ignored by the poll must not be Americans, according to the NYTs methodology, and there are about as much an overpolling of Obama voters. NYT's Shady Lady polling.
If you don't have unlimited funds and if you are not the sort of experienced traveller who likes to do everything yourself, your own way, check out our friends at Club ABC before the summer is over.
As you can imagine, times are tough in the travel biz but that means that there are still ways to go someplace interesting without breaking the bank. The prices are better than they should be.
The folks at ABC have been generous to Ducks Unlimited. Enuf said.
In the wake of trying to squelch three federal Inspector Generals, there’s this story about how those who try to expose Obama, Obama administration, and Obama ally activities are dealt with.
[UPDATE: ACORN tries to hide behind a change in name, and more about it trying to squelch former members. Same smell remains.]
ACORN/ProjectVote has filed a suit against Anita Moncrief, asking damages of well over $5 million.Anita Moncrief is a former employee who has distributed internal emails to exhibit illegal ties between the Obama presidential campaign and ACORN/ProjectVote, and she has testified and written widely about what she knows.ACORN/ProjectVote has received tens of millions of federal funds and is slated to receive many, many more millions.
The 30-page civil action filed by ProjectVote is downloadable here. Legal papers are not my usual Saturday morning reading, but this one caught my eye as an illustration of legal thuggery.
The charges are basically three:
Moncrief misappropriated about $1700 while an employee, of which she’paid back about $500 before Moncrief’s employment was terminated. She helped expose how a former executive stole $1million.In a blogpost by Moncrief last November, she admits her own misuse of funds and takes responsibility, pleading extreme need due to poor health insurance benefit and pay.Yet the suit presents nothing about trying legally to recover the remaining funds from her.The charge appears in order to lay groundwork for reducing Moncrief’s credibility and as reason for her seeking vengeance.
The next charge is that Moncrief misappropriated ProjectVote’s trademark by her use of the email address projectvotenews@mail.org to distribute internal emails exhibiting embarrassing doings to donors.This appears a weak charge as in this grey area of law it does not appear she infringed on the trademark.See, for example, “Fair Use of Trademarks” at the The Publishing Law Center.
The next charge is that Moncrief damaged relationships with donors.No impact on donations is presented.Another weak charge.
The complaint includes, in addition to Moncrief, a “John Doe”, another employee who may have supplied Moncrief with additional internal material.This appears an effort to unearth the remaining whistleblowing mole.
A competent legal team for Moncrief should be able to deal with the charges, and in the process of discovery and media coverage bring further to light ACORN/ProjectVote’s nature.Hopefully, Moncrief will obtain it, or be squelched by her own lack of funds to defend herself and our right to know where and how our tax dollars are used.
Of note, the New York Times shut down its investigation of ACORN/ProjectVote.Newsbusters describes some of the details.
But apparently Moncrief's information was suddenly no good when it might have embarrassed the Obama campaign.
Heidelbaugh testified before a congressional committee in March that the nonprofit group violated a host of tax, campaign finance, and other laws. She said the Obama campaign sent ACORN its "maxed out donor list" and asked two of the avowedly nonpartisan group's employees "to reach out to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN."
The 48' Colin Archer above is for sale, but what we really need up here in the Northeast is an Ark. Almost up to 40 days and 40 nights of cold rain. Nobody is boating much yet. I call all crummy weather "climate change" now. Don't you? Aren't we entitled to nice weather? Why doesn't the government do something about it?
JOHN TIERNEY: U.S. Climate Report Assailed: “The new federal report on climate change gets a withering critique from Roger Pielke Jr., who says that it misrepresents his own research and that it wrongly concludes that climate change is already responsible for an increase in damages from natural disasters.”
Does academia believe that they all think alike because they're smarter than me? I do not think that they are. They just chose different careers. Everybody is a careerist, to some extent.
It is a foregone conclusion that the bill now getting marked up in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) is not going anywhere.
Note that the economy has seemed to stabilize, more or less, and well under ten percent of the stimulus money has been spent to date. Moving forward, if no further major programs will be put into place, how would you like to spend the rest of that cash?
Seriously.
But Tyler, that cash doesn't exist yet. It's debt. Debt isn't money - it's negative money.
My grandmother, advocate of the turn of the century (that’s early 1900’s) democratic socialism based in defense of the little guy from rampant big business, taught me that the biggest myth in America is the efficiency of big business.So, government grew in regulations and programs, and so did unions, to counter big business and favor the little guy.‘Till now it’s a truism that big government is inefficient and too little the friend of the little guy, and big unions are money founts for their leaders at the expense of labor having jobs.Meanwhile, big business has more and more become an ally of big government and unions to divide the spoils, and stifle competition and innovation.All that leaves to maneuver for the little guy against the increasing encroachments of the biggies is small business and individuals.
It’s time for more small businesspeople and individuals to defy the biggies with a chant of I am Spartacus, or I am an American.
(No, I didn’t purposely ignore big academia.It has made itself largely irrelevant via meaningless coursework enriching self-serving pedants.)
Consider a few datapoints:
Investigative journalist Tim Carney reminds usthat in 1993 the biggest insurers supported Hillarycare, to shift liability risk onto taxpayers and profit from claims-processing contracts.Small insurers, brokers who work with small companies, and individuals revolted.Today, the big insurers are again cooperating with the government-dictated health care advocates, as long as the big insurers can profit from more premium payers steered their way.
The Canadian medical societies remind us not to go north for a model of government-dictated health care, as the waits are excessive by even long-wait standards approved by the government.
The former Chief Economist of the US Chamber of Commerce reminds us (sorry, a subscription only column) that when government as umpire controls a team, bad and self-serving calls are to be expected.
Michelle Malkin reminds us that Mrs. Obama and President Obama’s chief political operative worked to reduce care for the poor, to enrich her employer (and her compensation).
Mickey Kaus reminds us that unions are to be exempted from Obamacare, and further benefit from attracting members through higher benefits than the rest of us.
The CEO of the consumer highest-rated insurer in the US reminds us that he doesn’t so much fear government-plan competition but, “more about the federal government’s ability to do this at all, much less do it well. Merely coordinating basic demographic information between Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - three big federal programs that millions of Americans belong to - can be a chore for beneficiaries, their children, and their health plans.”
Be Spartacus.Say "I am American.I refuse to be pushed around by the biggies, or under their thumb."
Write or call your congressional representatives to represent your views.
"Mr. Gorbachev, that wall is none of our business." — Ronald Reagan
"December seventh, nineteen forty-one. A date upon which we must ask ourselves, what could we have done to avoid this?" — FDR
"Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you!" — JFK
"If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. Pretty sure that's gonna happen on my watch." — G. W. Bush
"Speak softly and eloquently." — Teddy Roosevelt
"You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you really only need to fool the majority of people until the election is over." — Abraham Lincoln
"To be prepared for war is far too provocative." — George Washington
Ruling cleric warns protesters. I know it doesn't take 51% of a population to make a revolution: it only takes a 5% highly-motivated core or, as in our American Rev, about 30% support.
But what if their election was relatively legit, with only Chicago-style fraud?
We would all be pleased to see Iran return to modern civilization, but what if the majority do not think that way? What if the majority want a combative Islamic theocracy with a dopey selected figurehead in his Members Only jacket?
What if a majority value their religion over modernity and the Western community, and the protesters are mainly the urbanites and students? Then what?
Photo: Esfehan protest this week, via Gateway who is constantly on top of this story
Got rain? Man, have we had rain. Great for our new transplants. We are working on an ark as I type. No doubt global warming is causing the cooling and rain.
Pure reasonableness re Iran. Tiger. Proof that these intertubes need not always be an emotional vomitorium.
Also reasonable: Get off the O's garden. Fake or not, gardens are good. Rich folks like the Os can afford instant gardens - but we pay the bills for them. Thus it's your garden too, in a government sort of way. Ask for a tomato.
The problem for the feminists is that the brand is ruined beyond recognition. When people think feminists they think man-hating, abortion-loving, children-resenting, big-mouthed butch lesbians.
We sure do. Once their goals were accomplished, they were coopted by the loonies. Like this one.
A primary reason America is "waiting" and "watching" and "monitoring" while Iranians are beaten in the streets of Tehran is that the country is led by the left.
…the world is "closely following the situation," just as it followed the situations of the Jews during the Holocaust, the Ukrainians, the Chinese under Mao, the Rwandans, the Cambodians, Tibetans, and so many others.
It’s not yet time to beat a dead horse, but it’s increasingly obvious that the Left’s horse is faltering badly before the finish line of grasping control of healthcare.
More centrist congressional Democrats are staking out a more moderate position than the Democrat Party’s more radical leadership.
Jennifer Rubin, at Commentary’s Contentions blog, chuckles at Leftist naïf Ezra Klein’s revealing the Senate Democrats are being forced to significantly scale back their grand scheme: “One has to laugh: no Santa and no universal healthcare plan that ‘holds down costs.’ ”
How much longer before President Obama has to throw this dead horse under the bus, or falls off his high-horse?
This was supposed to be a red-letter week for national health care, as Democrats started the process of hustling a quarter-baked bill through Congress to reorganize one-sixth of the economy on a partisan vote. Instead it was a fiasco.
Most of the devastation was wreaked by the Congressional Budget Office, which on Tuesday reported that draft legislation from the Senate Finance Committee would increase the federal deficit by more than $1.6 trillion over the next decade while only partly denting the population of the uninsured. The details haven't been made public, but the short version seems to be that President Obama's health boondoggle prescribes vast new spending without a coherent plan to pay for it even while failing to meet its own standards for social equity.
"Séraphine is one of the most evocative films about an artist I’ve ever seen—and in its treatment of madness one of the least condescending." (New York Magazine) Séraphine, which swept the Césars with seven wins earlier this year, is a dramatic new biopic from French director Martin Provost. Once a humble servant in a small town, Séraphine de Senlis rose to prominence as a self-taught “naïve” painter. Her discovery by art critic and collector Wilhelm Uhde, however, led to the fame and fortune that eventually cut her off from her inspiration, and ultimately to her unraveling. This film—a throwback to the European tradition of vintage arthouse storytelling—was described by the L.A. Times as “an examination, both unsettling and deeply touching, of the sources of creativity, the vagaries of renown, and the complexities of relationships.” Martin Provost. 2008. 125 m. NR. France/Belgium, French/German/with subtitles. Music Box Films.
The [Field Poll] survey of registered voters in California found that a huge majority favors President Barack Obama's proposal to allow people to choose between a government-sponsored health plan and private insurance.
The poll also showed considerable bipartisan agreement among voters about various health care proposals, but sharp disagreement between Democrats and Republicans about how to pay for them.
Basically, looking at the actual poll tabulations, about 90% of those polled having health insurance, there’s generally broad agreement among Democrats and Independents on nice sounding goals (“Given the serious economic problems facing the country, which of the following two statements comes closest to your own views regarding what should be done about health care reform?” It is more important than ever: Democrats 85%, Independents 69%, Republicans 39%) but an lesser willingness to personally pay more for them, preferring that someone else does (“Having a new value added tax which is like a national sales tax” Favor strongly or somewhat: Democrats 53%, Independents 39%, Republicans 25%; Compare to “Limit the tax deductions available to families making more than $250,000 a year” Favor strongly or somewhat: Democrats 69%, Independents 60%, Republicans 42%).
When it has come, however, to actual votes, even the liberal California state legislature has shied away from imposing government-dictated health care schemes.As the “progressive” New America Foundation said of the lesson from the rejected 2007 scheme for California,“the issues of affordability for families and sustainability for taxpayers must be satisfactorily addressed.”An understatement.As a Kaiser Foundation 2009 poll sums up:“A slim majority of Democrats (53%) are willing to pay more for providing coverage, while 38% of independents and 29% of Republicans say the same.” Other polls indicate that even among those willing to pay more, the amount is nominal. For example, among the uninsured, those of small income (under $20,000/year) are willing to pay $100 per month and those earning much more ($80,000) $200, versus actual comprehensive insurance costs of about $400 for individuals and over $1,000 for families.
The overall California results and the split between Democrats, Independents and Republicans is more marked than elsewhere, but indicative of splits elsewhere.California is a heavily Democrat state, with the proportion of registered Democrats and Democrat leaning Independents increasing significantly between 2004 and 2008.The Field Poll is of those registered to vote, not of those who do vote.Even though registered voters are whiter, earn more and are older than the population, those moved to vote are even more so.
Take note Congress.
Pro-government-dictated health care pup Ezra Klein points out that, according to a cited study, only about 10% of early deaths from disease are due to “shortfalls in medical care,” versus from “behavioral patterns, 40 percent” or “genetic predispositions, about 30 percent.” Klein asks, then, “If medical care has such a minor impact on a person's longevity, why are we spending so much time and energy reforming the industry?”Klein says it’s because the focus is on the profits, jobs and government-largesse at stake for the interests involved.I would add, it’s because of the power that can be garnered by Washington over our lives and pockets, and the contributions that can be garnered by politicians.
Take note taxpayers.Take note citizens.Take note those in real health care need.It’s not about you.
BTW: According to the latest New York Times poll, only 7% see health care problems as the nation’s top priority, versus 38% the economy and 19% jobs.That’s why the Times reports, “fewer than half [44%] of Americans saying they approve of how he has handled health care and the effort to save General Motors and Chrysler [41%].”56% say the government is doing too much that is better left to individuals and business.60% say Obama hasn’t a clear plan to deal with the budget deficit.They’re wrong.Obama clearly aims to deepen the deficit.
The danger liberalism poses to the American experiment comes from its disposition to deplete rather than replenish the capital required for self-government. Entitlement programs overextend not only financial but political capital. They proffer new “rights,” goad people to demand and expand those rights aggressively, and disdain truth in advertising about the nature or scope of the new debts and obligations those rights will engender. The experiment in self-government requires the cultivation, against the grain of a democratic age, of the virtues of self-reliance, patience, sacrifice, and restraint.
Drunk pedophiles in Canadian government? It hasn't been disproven.
Lots of smart people are bearish. Morgan Stanley's Roach certainly is. Kudlow, much as I enjoy him, is a perennially sunny optimist by nature, so you almost have to discount him.
Muscular prose reflects muscular thinking (Churchill, Reagan, GW). Flabby prose reflects flabby thinking (Chamberlain, Carter, Obama). Never use one metaphorically-charged noun or active verb when a string of colorless nouns and passive verbs will do.
Related: The "Public Option" is the Son of Medicaid. Henninger. He also explains why state legistators have become irrelevant, often corrupt clowns: they have nothing to do because most spending is mandated leaving them little room for their own fun spending of your money.
Why would anybody go into medicine if the government is going to make your decisions for you on a cost basis, if you are essentially on the government payroll and compensated on a money-losing basis (after overhead, Medicaid is a money-loser for doctors and Medicare pays them for office work at clerical rates), and yet you remain entirely vulnerable to lawsuits for every outcome?
This administration forcefully confronts Americans but kisses up to those who would destroy America. God moves in mysterious ways.
The report, produced by more than 30 scientists at 13 government agencies dealing with climate change, provides the most detailed picture to date of the worst case scenarios of rising sea levels and extreme weather events: floods in lower Manhattan …
Like the 1953 flood that was caused by a high tide? Or the 1961 flood, also caused by high tides? Or maybe like the NYC floods in 1901, 1903, 1927 and 1977 that were simply caused by rain? Hey, what if New York is hit by a Paris-style flood? That would be a climate change nightmare. Further from Obama’s worst-case confrontation case file:
… a quadrupling of heat waves deaths in Chicago …
More information, please. Would that be a quadrupling of the 64 deaths during one day in 1911? The 2996 deaths across the northwest in 1936? The ten deaths in one Chicago morning 131 years ago? The 20 deaths in two days during 1900? Would the rise match the 65 per cent increase in heat-related deaths from 1935 to 1936? Might one person die every thirty minutes, as happened during a 1916 heatwave?
Kondratiev (once a JAG Corps Lieutenant Commander) got a rare opportunity this week to attend a “Current Strategy Forum” which is periodically put on by the U. S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. It was a fabulous event, featuring Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, subtitled One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time. Other keynote speakers were Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University; Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations, Raymond Mabus, Secretary of the Navy; Anne-Marie Slaughter, Esq., Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State; and General James T. Conway, Commandant of the Marine Corps.
Panel discussion members included Stephen Walt, Harvard University; G. John Ikenberry, Princeton University; Mitchell Reiss, The College of William and Mary; Donald Kagan, Yale University; Eliot Cohen, Johns Hopkins University; Daniel Byman, Georgetown University; Michael Doran, New York University; Thomas Fingar, Stanford University; Shibley Telhami, University of Maryland; Michael O’Hanlon, Brookings Institution; Thomas G. Mahnken, Johns Hopkins University; and Patrick M. Cronin, National Defense University. The conference was a spectacular demonstration of the talent the U.S. Government can bring to bear at this time, regardless of the party in power.
Focusing on the Greg Mortenson talk, NBC newscaster Tom Brokaw calls Mortenson "one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, who is really changing the world." In a 1993 climb of Pakistan's treacherous K2, the world's second highest mountain, Greg stopped 500 yards from the summit and had a sense of failure. On returning to a village below, he was struck by the desperate, unfulfilled desire of the inhabitants for education, and made a rash promise to somehow return to build a school.
Since 1993, Mortenson has dedicated his life as a humanitarian devoted to promote education, especially for girls, in remote, volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and as of 2007, Mortenson had established 58 schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 24,000 children, including 14,000 girls, where few education opportunities existed before.
His efforts (and the efforts of others like Educate Girls Globally) have been generally received well by the Afghans and the Pakistanis. Although the MSM doesn’t have time or space to report it, in year 2000, 800,000 Afghani children attended school. In 2008, 8,600,000 were attending school, and of these, 2,300,000 are girls.
It has not been easy. In 1996, he survived an eight day armed kidnapping in the Northwest Frontier Province tribal areas of western Pakistan, and escaped a 2003 firefight with feuding Afghan warlords by hiding for eight hours under putrid animal hides in a truck going to a leather-tanning factory. He has overcome two fatwehs from Islamic mullahs, one of which banished him from the country for teaching girls. He appealed to the top cleric, agreeing to leave if that was the decision, and after several weeks received a letter in a gift box which described his work as blessed by Allah.
Mortenson is a living hero to rural communities of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he has gained the trust of Islamic leaders, military commanders and tribal chiefs from his tireless effort to champion education, especially for girls.
His cross-cultural expertise has brought him to speak on U.S. Capital Hill, national think tanks, the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, the U.S. State Department, libraries, outdoor groups, universities, schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, business and civic groups, women's organizations and many more.
As General Conway said, he, Admiral Mike Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs), and others in high places all read Three Cups of Tea (which has been on the NY Times best-seller list for 123 weeks) on their wives’ recommendations, but this essay comes from the discovery that they are all taking it very, very seriously!
It was the view of Professor Michael Doran, another speaker with broad State Department experience, that the State Department is an entity which exists to “negotiate behind closed doors with duly appointed representatives of recognized governments”. As an organization whose mission is “process”, success or failure are not important considerations – they are just a part of the process.
However, for the military on the ground in the Middle East, success is enormously important - in fact, an issue of life or death, and failure is unacceptable. It always takes several years of war for the American military and its political bosses to sort out the warriors from the politicians, and now it is done. To the U.S. government, Greg has advised listening, listening long and listening genuinely.
Admiral Mullen, General Stanley McCrystal, General Conway and one other top guy (I missed his name) have visited Afghanistan 32 times in the last year. On Adm. Mullen’s last trip he gave a slightly offended Karzai an hour or less and then spent twelve hours meeting local imams and elders, drinking tea and listening to them, and they said some things that were not very polite, but he listened. And then he flew to the tribal areas of Pakistan and drank tea listened to another group of leaders for another twelve hours.
Speaker after speaker among the academics agreed that it was only the U.S. military which had the intellectual ability, the motivation, the tools, the cultural sensitivity and the presence to relate to the people of diverse cultures around the world. They are not perfect, but they are the best the United States has to offer.
Incidentally, Greg is from Montana, of Norwegian Lutheran extraction, and will not accept a penny from the U.S. government. He has a new book coming, fans, about his recent experiences, which will be titled Stones into Schools. On his way to K2, he was not sensitive to the misery in the villages, and had he succeeded in reaching the summit, he might never have been.
The president and his aides have reached a point of potential political peril, where the massive interventions they have made to deal with the recession and virtual collapse of Detroit -- to be followed soon by an attempt to overhaul the U.S. health system -- can be seen as the opening stages of a reordering of the American economy.
To deflate that impression, Mr. Obama's chief White House economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, was inNew York a few days ago to give a speech saying essentially: No, we aren't socialists.
Krugman 
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Kondratiev (once a JAG Corps Lieutenant Commander) got a rare opportunity this week to attend a “Current Strategy Forum” which is periodically put on by the U. S. Naval War College in