On Thursday, President Obama delivered a speech on immigration that was an obvious attempt to turn a crisis into an opportunity for Democrats and progressives.

It’s impossible to  know how many illegal aliens reside in the US.  But government estimates – for whatever they’re worth – have ranged over the last decade from 10 to 15 million.

Democrats have long seen the large population of illegals as a potential opportunity to increase the number of reliable Democratic voters, if they could be transformed into citizens.

The matters of border security and illegal immigration are currently perceived as a crisis by most Americans.  At least half of California’s staggering $21 Billion dollar state deficit can be traced to the cost of illegal immigration, including the $9 Billion dollar cost of housing 3 million illegals in California prisons.

Arizona is suffering a wave of violent crime committed by illegal aliens.   The Arizona legislature passed a law that empowers local law enforcement to determine the immigration status of persons they engage in the course of traffic stops or criminal investigations.  If those persons turn out to be in the US illegally they are to be turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation.

The actual text of the Arizona law is a word for word copy of the federal law that empowers federal authorities to identify, arrest and deport illegals.

The Obama Administration helped propel the Arizona law into a perceived crisis by denouncing it as “racist” and announcing plans to launch a suit against Arizona to nullify it.

In his speech President Obama criticized Americans who demand border enforcement and called on Congress to enact so-called “comprehensive” immigration reform. He called the Arizona law “unenforceable,” in spite of the fact that it exactly mirrors US law that his Administration is charged with enforcing!

Throughout the speech was the implicit and explicit assumption that part of “comprehensive reform” was a “path to citizenship” for the illegal population.  It’s obvious from his remarks that he will not commit to securing the border as a stand-alone goal.  He will commit only to “comprehensive” reform that he promises will include some improvement to border security.  And, he blamed Republicans in Congress for the failure of his huge Democrat majority to enact any reform.

He is right that the “immigration system” is dysfunctional.  It’s probably the most dysfunctional bureaucracy in America.  But changes in immigration policy can be implemented and enforced only if the border is secure.

Immigration policy is after all about permitting some foreigners to enter and keeping others out.  If the border is not secure the policy is meaningless.

The Bottom Line:

Article 4 Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution requires the federal government to secure the border.  By refusing to improve border security unless Republicans support his so-called comprehensive reform, President Obma stands in defiance of the Constitution.  Closing the border to illegal entry  should be a lead election year issue.

Does he want them to promise to resurrect government run health care?  NO!

Does he advise them to promote other programs from the President’s agenda, including:

• big tax increases on small businesses?
• Cap and trade, an artificial energy shortage imposed by government regulation, coupled with a new energy tax?
• new laws that will coerce employers and their employees into union contracts they don’t want?

NO!

Mr. Menendez advises Democrats to try to stir up conflict between Republican candidates and tea party activists.  He urges Democrats to force Republican candidates to publicly answer what he believes will be divisive questions. Here’s an example,

Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism and should never have been created in the first place?

The honest answer is obvious.  Of course they should never have been created.  Not because they “represent socialism,” but because they exceed the authority granted to Congress under the Constitution, because they have proven to be financially unworkable, and because they will cause a lot of misery in the future.

Social Security was sold to the voters of the 1930s with a lie that it was a retirement savings program and there would be a “trust fund.”  Today, most Americans realize there never was any savings, and the trust fund is and always was an accounting fiction.

In reality, Social Security is a payroll tax that collects cash from wage earners and small business owners and immediately pays it out to retirees.  Since 1984 the payroll tax has collected more than was needed to pay retirees.  According to the continuing political lie, the surplus was “borrowed,” from the “trust fund,” and spent on other government expenses.   The so-called trust fund now consists entirely of IOUs, signifying the fiction that the government owes itself about $4.4 Trillion.  Beginning in 2014 payroll tax revenue will be less than benefit payouts and Congress will have to choose either benefit cuts or tax increases because the “trust fund” is worthless.

When the payroll tax began in 1937 it was 2% of the first $3,000 in wages, half paid by the employer and half paid by the employee.  Voters tolerated the new tax because it was small and the promises were big.  Adjusted for inflation, $3,000 would be about $45,000 today.  At 2%, today’s Social Security payroll tax on $45,000 would be $450 each on employer and employee, for the whole year.

But after a dozen tax rate increases, the tax on a $45,000 salary is now $2,800 each, on employer and employee.  By the way, $2,800 dos not include the additional payroll taxes that were added to fund Medicare and SSI.  Those add-ons raise the total to $3,442 each on employer and employee.  Even after all those increases the current tax rate is not nearly enough to fund baby boomer retirement benefits.  Government has done nothing to prepare for the boomers even though the benefits have been promised and scheduled for 50 – 64 years.

Republican candidates should demonstrate honesty by openly stating what most voters already know, that Social Security is looming train wreck.   There will be no clever, painless, political adjustment that keeps everyone happy.  The only responsible course of action is to gradually phase out this dishonest program.  A phase-out will entail a lot of pain, but it has to be done.  Social Security is simply unsustainable.

Mendenez and the Democrats seem to think voters will, as they did in the past, turn against a candidate who is honest about the looming, painful, Social Security/Medicare crisis.  But in 2010 we’ve embarked on a new era when voters are loath to trust Utopian promises from the Left, including the usual promise to sustain Social Security without causing any pain, except maybe to “the rich.”  Voters in Massachusetts elected Scott Brown who vowed, unconditionally, to kill ObamaCare even though the President and the Democrats had promised it would improve medical care and lower costs for everyone.

If the Republicans nominate strong honest candidates, 2010 will be remembered as the beginning of a new era when brutal honesty became the winning political strategy in America

Seventeenth Century military scholar Carl Von Clausewitz, author of an exhaustive treatise on the philosophy of war, wrote:

War is a mere continuation of politics by other means

Clausewitz also observed that war and politics are a “fascinating trinity.” National War College Scholar Christopher Bassford summarized Clausewitz’s trinity.  Politics and war are:

…a dynamic, inherently unstable interaction of the forces of violent emotion, chance, and rational calculation.

Barack Obama’s emotion driven campaign, aided by chance in the form of the sudden, unanticipated economic crisis, succeeded in electing a President with virtually no relevant experience, whose intentions were not understood by the voters.

Obama’s “rational calculation” was to use the crisis as a pretext for an immediate, overwhelming, legislative attack, on several fronts all at once.  He used Chicago style, hard-ball, political tactics to drive a sweeping agenda of authoritarian government control over health care, energy production, and allocation of economic resources.

His first assault, the so-called “stimulus” turned out to be the tactical miscalculation of a rookie.  In a departure from typical big-government hype Obama’s stimulus sales pitch promised immediate, measurable results that were impossible to achieve.  When the unemployment rate sailed past his guaranteed maximum 8%, Obama claimed, unconvincingly, that his stimulus had spared us from even worse misery and had begun to turn things around.

Stimulus failure became the on-going reminder that use of force by government, in service of the Utopian dreams of the political elite, never delivers the promised results and always brings on negative, unanticipated conditions and consequences.

When chance struck, and  Senator Kennedy died, rational calculation led Democrats to proceed based on the assumption that a Senate seat the bluest state in the union would, out of emotional reverence for Kennedy if nothing else, remain in the Democrat column, preserving the 60 vote majority required to drive health care.

But keeping ObamaCare legislation alive with an accelerating series of blatantly corrupt political payoffs, the latest being a special exemption only for union members, from an onerous new health insurance tax, triggered the national gag reflex.  The spectacle of raw power and corruption in Washington generated intense negative emotion, expressed visibly in nation-wide tea party protests and raucous town hall meetings that flummoxed those stupefied Senators and Congressmen.

Voters began to show they had transitioned away from the woozy emotion of hope and unspecified change to their own rational calculation by electing anti-establishment Republicans to the governor’s offices of New Jersey and Virginia, even after Obama swooped in to campaign for their opponents.

Then, last night came what Democrats considered an unthinkable combination of violent emotion and rational calculation:  Scott Brown, the candidate who vowed forcefully and unambiguously to be the 41^st vote that would derail ObamaCare won a decisive victory, transforming the Kennedy Seat into The People’s Seat.

In the health care political battle, as in military battles, the losing side kept fighting with full fury until the very moment it was forced to retreat.  Thus Nancy Pelosi told reporters as she left her office at 11:30 Tuesday night that passing ObamaCare was still on track and still imminent.

But early signals of surrender were evident Wednesday morning as high-profile health care zealots in the House and Senate openly accepted the possibility of failure.

The media and blogs are overflowing with predictions.  But this is a moment of maximum instability in the interaction of Clausewitz’s trinity of political forces. We won’t know for several weeks how the political-media establishment plans to counterattack.  But counterattack they will.  You can take it to the bank.

Secretary Napolitano now claims the media took her comment out of context.  But a review of the transcript reveals that “system worked” was only one of several stunningly dishonest, and incompetent statements in the same interview, conducted by Candy Crowley of CNN.

Crowley opened the interview by asking if the attack was part of a larger plot, or a lone wolf.  Napolitano anssered:

Well, right now, we have no indication that it’s part of anything larger, but obviously the investigation continues…But the traveling public is very, very safe in this air environment. And while we continue to investigate the source of this incident, I think the traveling public should be confident in what we are doing now.

Really?  Why should travelers be confident?  How could she claim travelers were “very, very safe” when the investigation hadn’t yet determined if there was a larger plot?

Crowley then asked if there were any evidence of the Al Qaida ties that the suspect claimed

Right now, that is part of the criminal justice investigation that is ongoing, and I think it would be inappropriate to speculate as to whether or not he has such ties.

Of course!  Initiate a civilian criminal investigation instead of treating an enemy combatant as an enemy combatant.  Then use the investigation as a pretext for not disclosing any relevant information to “the traveling public,” except that they should be “confident.”  Ms. Napolitano continued…

What we are focused on is making sure that the air environment remains safe, that people are confident when they travel.

That was the second time in 60 seconds she called for confidence.

Next came the system-worked part that made so much news.  You can decide for yourself if the media quoted her out of context:

And one thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action.

“Appropriate action?”  What choice did they have?  Even though they submitted to all the petty and annoying rules, and took off their shoes in the airport, a man known to American Intelligence to be aligned with Al Qaeda, with a one-way ticket and no luggage, somehow manage to bring explosives onto the plane!  Passengers and crew did what they had to do to survive.  Now, they have to suffer the insult being patted on the head for their role in Napolitano’s dysfunctional “system.”

Within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring, all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred on the Northwest Airlines flight…So the whole process of making sure that we respond properly, correctly and effectively went very smoothly.

In his comments from Hawaii on Monday President Obama also claimed that “we made sure all flights in the air were secure and could land safely.”  But it turns out there were approximately 3,500 flights in the air over America at the time, and only 128 that were inbound from Europe received any communication.  Through their unions and associations pilots are now complaining, and federal officials now admit, that the remaining 3,371 weren’t even notified.

When asked how the terrorist could have brought explosives on the plane when passengers are forbidden to carry more than 3.4 ounces of liquid Napolitano answered:

Well, we are asking the same questions, looking at what happened in Amsterdam as he transferred flights to a flight that was U.S.-bound….We have no suggestion that he was improperly screened…

She wanted travelers to be “confident” yet she couldn’t answer the question and she claimed there was “no suggestion” that a terrorist who boarded the plane with explosives was improperly screened!  Why weren’t the explosives in his underwear a “suggestion”?

Crowley pointed out that it would not make people feel safe to hear that he was properly screened.  Napolitano’s astounding response:

Well, you know, it should. This was one individual literally of thousands that fly and thousands of flights every year. And he was stopped before any damage could be done.

He was stopped by passengers!  Is she taking credit for stopping him?  She claimed he passed “proper” screening while carrying explosives! And travelers should feel safe?  She sounded like a bureaucrat

And now the forensics are analyzing, well, what actually could have been done with whatever substance he had and whatever amount. Those are all undetermined issues right now.

Translation:  You should feel safe traveling while we try to figure out what explosive he had in his knickers and how he passed through appropriate screening.

When asked about the watch lists and no-fly lists and why the terrorist wasn’t scrutinized after his father, an educated, Nigerian government official, had warned the CIA about his connections with Al Qaeda, Napolitano continued her nearly incoherent babbling:

Well, there is no suggestion that — he was on what’s called a tied list, which has half-a-million-plus names on it. And there is no suggestion that that was not shared information. The issue was, was there enough information to move him to the more specific lists, which would require additional examination or indeed being on no-fly status. And to date, it does not appear that there was any such information to move him from that tied list, which was shared and everybody had it, but to a more specific list which would require different types of screening at the airport…

Why does the tied list exist if no action is taken when someone’s name is on it?

Now, one of the things I think we will be doing over the next weeks is really looking at those watch lists procedures in light of this occurring and saying, OK, do those need to be changed? They have been in place for a number of years…

We are always dealing with a changing environment. But we do it and we do it really very, very quickly and very thoroughly across the entire air environment, through airports both domestically and internationally. And that has happened over this weekend.

So even though she appears to admit the list system has not been revised for “a number of years” she also claims to be dealing very quickly with a changing environment!  How can the Obama Administration tolerate such a high official so openly contradicting herself?

When asked if her Department “looked forward” to anticipate emerging threats as well as reacting after the fact to terrorist attacks Napolatino brushed aside the question and for the third time defended her system with a claim we now know was a lie, that all flights were notified:

Oh, absolutely. And that work is ongoing all the time. But we also recognize that it is important that we anticipate that someone could indeed get on a plane with intent to do harm, regardless of everything that we do. And that requires, then, everybody to know what to do when that occurs, which is what happened here, and the ability to immediately get information out to flights that are already in the air, as well as flights that are on the ground. And we exercised that.

The most charitable thing we can say about Ms. Napolitano is that she irresponsibly appeared on TV without first doing her homework to prepare for easily anticipated questions.  A more realistic assessment is that she is utterly inept, that after a year in office she knows little more about airline security than anyone who occasionally takes a flight.

On Christmas Day, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was en route from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit. As the plane made its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body, setting off a fire.

Allegedly? With dozens of eye-witnesses why must the President be so politically correct?  Does it have to be proven in court before he can admit something actually happened?

Thanks to the quick and heroic actions of passengers and crew, the suspect was immediately subdued, the fire was put out, and the plane landed safely.

Apparently the passengers and crew were the “system” Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano said “worked” during a Sunday TV interview.

The suspect is now in custody and has been charged with attempting to destroy an aircraft.  A full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism, and we will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable.

If only I had a dime for every time I’ve heard a political promise of a “full investigation.”

Since I was first notified of this incident, I’ve ordered the following actions to be taken to protect the American people and to secure air travel.First, I directed that we take immediate steps to ensure the safety of the traveling public.

If there are steps to take, shouldn’t they have been taken already?

We made sure that all flights still in the air were secure and could land safely.

If “we” means Obama, his administration, the federal bureaucracy, the how could “we” possibly do that?  How can anyone on the ground ensure the security and safety of a plane in the air?  The President just admitted it was untrained, volunteer passengers and cabin crew who secured plane this terrorist tried to blow up!

I’ve directed my national security team to keep up the pressure on those who would attack our country.

What does this mean?  We’re they about to curtail “the pressure?”

We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us, whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland.

But this President has already reduced or eliminated key “elements,” resulting in this terrorist being handled in the least effective way possible.  There is no Constituitonal or legal requirement to treat this terrorist as a civilian “suspect” of a civilian crime rather than a foreign, enemy combatant, taken prisoner as he was engaged in an act of war.  An enemy combatant can be interrogated immediately and for as long as it takes to draw out useful information.  A civilian “suspect” has the right to an attorney, who has the right to terminate interrogation.  The “suspect” has already lawyered up.

Following 9-11 the most useful intelligence our agencies acquired, intelligence that enabled them to prevent additional attacks, came from interrogation of captured enemy combatants.

Finally, the American people should remain vigilant, but also be confident. Those plotting against us seek not only to undermine our security, but also the open society and the values that we cherish as Americans. This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.

The word “resilient” doesn’t really fit.  It seems to be an attempt to sell us on the notion that because some of the passengers and cabin crew had the strength and quick reactions to disable the terrorist before he could successfully detonate his bomb the rest of us should be resilient and “confident.”

The Bottom Line

It’s hard to shake the perception that President Obama is out of touch with reality.

Reps. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and Brian Baird (D-Wash.) introduced a resolution in June that would require a 72 hour/three day time-out to allow members and the public to read legislation online before the House votes.  Here are some excerpts from the official summary:

Amends…rules of the House of Representatives to make it out of order…to consider a measure or matter until 72 hours (excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays unless the House is in session on such a day) after its text and… the text of all accompanying reports have been made available to Members…and the general public.

Requires the full text of the legislation and each committee report, without further amendment before floor consideration, to be posted continuously by means of the Internet.

Declares that nothing in this resolution …shall be interpreted to require …posting on the Internet of classified information in the custody of the House.

So far, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has abused her authority to prevent this resolution from coming to the floor of the House for a vote.  Yesterday, Representatives Walden and Baird filed a “discharge petition.”  If signed by a majority of  members a discharge petition compels the Speaker to schedule a vote of the full House.

Only in the alternative reality of Congress would a mere three days to read and comprehend the meaning of – and unintended consequences of – hundreds of pages or thousands of pages of dense, arcane legalese be seen as unreasonable delay.  Taking the House version of ObamaCare as an example, if one worked eight hours per day one would have to be able to read, analyze and consider the consequences of 42 pages per hour.  Many of those pages refer to other laws and federal codes, that one would also have to look up and read.

The opposition to permitting Congressmen, Senators and the public this pathetic little window of time brings the brazen arrogance of the political establishment into sharp focus.  The notion that we voters and taxpayers and our elected representatives should accept only three days to review thousand-plus page bills may seem like a joke out here in the real world.

But if enacted this rule would be a revolutionary change to business as usual in Congress.  It has become routine since the Obama Administration began for  Senators and Congressmen to vote for monumentally complex legislation they have not read, and do not begin to understand.

Representatives Walden and Baird deserve our support and respect for trying to establish as a norm a procedure that allows us any time at all to read legislation, in its final, amended version, before it comes up for a vote.

Tens of thousands of people showed up at town halls across the country carrying portions of HR3200 on clipboards as they demanded clear answers to specific questions.  It became obvious from the reactions of stupefied Senators and Congressmen that they had not read the health care legislation they came home to defend.

Today, the Senate Commerce Committee continues working toward the goal of completing and then voting on yet another version of ObamaCare.  This bill, which would substantially change health insurance and access to medical services for every American was largely written by one man, Senator Baucus.

Yesterday Republican members of the committee offered a simple, modest Amendment: Post the final version of the bill online for a token 72 hours in advance of the committee vote.

Of course nobody could digest and consider all the consequences of a thousand plus pages of dense and arcane legalese in only 72 hours.  Possibly, 72 days would be sufficient.

But even 72 hours was too much for Committee Democrats who defeated the amendment.  So the bill will not be posted online before voting.  If the precedent set by the massive “stimulus” spending bill continues, the legislation won’t even be printed in its final form for committee members to read before they vote.

Establishment politicians do not want the voters watching via the Internet as they continue the relentless march toward authoritarian government, continuously diminishing individual rights and autonomy.  The Democrats prefer doing business Washington’s old way:  Snow the poor dumb folks at home with a lot of promises but don’t let them see what the fine print.  They’ll learn gradually, as the new laws and regulations roll out and are enforced by the bureaucracy.

If constituents object blame the bureaucrats, and, if he’s a Republican, the President.

Car dealers are not sympathetic figures in the American culture.  But if they suffer government inflicted financial hardship the consequences spill over into the communities where they do business.

It appears that placing their trust in the Cash for Clunkers program has driven thousands of dealers into desperate financial circumstances, some on the verge of closing and laying off employees.

Put simply, the program requires dealers to advance $3,500 or $4,500 rebates to customers who trade in vehicles that qualify as “Clunkers” and then apply to the federal Department of Transportation (DoT) for reimbursement.

Congressman Joe Sestak, Democrat from PA just sent the President a letter demanding urgent action to clear the log jam in Cash for Clunkers reimbursements.  According to Sestak only 2% of Dealer claims have been paid and thousands have been rejected by the bureaucracy for, in Sestak’s words, “minor oversights.”

The Greater New York Auto Dealers Association reports that 425 of it’s member dealers have been forced to drop the Clunkers program because they have not seen any reimbursement from the government for thousands of rebates they have advanced to customers.  They are out of cash and fear they will not be paid at all.

According to DoT, dealers have submitted 338,659 claims for reimbursement in the first month.  Also according to DoT 225 government employees have been assigned to the program.  DoT doesn’t say when they were assigned, or how they were trained.  The on line reimbursement process is mind-numbingly complex, requiring dealers to complete some 20 forms.  Government employees would have to take a substantial training program to understand the purposes and interpretation of all those forms and the regulations they connect to.  Have they been trained?  Are they wrongly rejecting dealer claims?  We’ll never know for sure because the answer lies deep in the bowels of the bureaucracy.  It’s likely the President himself can’t get a straight answer.

Even those who don’t like car dealers should wonder if ObamaCare, a thousand times more complex than Clunkers, can be implemented without catastrophic bureaucratic quagmires that can never be sorted out.   How many un-reimbursed doctors and hospitals will be driven out of business, and how many patients will suffer or even die because the system simply fails to function?

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As grim Congressmen and Senators face skeptical voters to explain their plans to vote for thousands of pages of legislation they have not read, to empower government officials to run the entire health care industry,  the Cash for Clunkers program burst into the news just in time to provide some comic relief.

By now most of us have heard Clunkers was in chaos after only a couple of days.  Here’s a summary recent developments:

• Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood  announced Thursday that Clunkers would be suspended at midnight because in only three days the program had burned through it’s budget of $1 Billion.

• On Friday the White House contradicted LaHood and assured car dealers and buyers that the program was still alive.

• President Obama sprinted to the cameras to personally smear lipstick on the clunker hog:

“I’m happy to report that it has succeeded well beyond our expectations and all expectations, and we’re already seeing a dramatic increase in showroom traffic at local car dealers. “It’s working so well that there are legitimate concerns that the funds in this program might soon be exhausted.”

• Car Dealerships, while appreciative of free government money to help sell cars are becoming anxious.  They’ve had to advance Clunker rebates to customers and then apply on line for reimbursement.  But the website that’s supposed to accept their claims requires as many as twenty documents and apparently is overloaded, and is not functioning properly

• On Friday the National Automobile Dealers Association surveyed 2,000 dealers and found they were holding about 25,000 clunker rebate applications that had not yet been accepted through the dysfunctional computer system.

• With the website not accepting all claims, officials don’t actually know how many claims are out there, or how much money is owed to dealerships.

• On Friday the House of Representatives passed an emergency $2 Billion cash transfusion, enough to buy and destroy another half-million cars.  The bill must also be passed by the Senate, but opposition is building and it’s fate is uncertain.
  

• On Sunday LaHood appeared on CSpan and was asked if the  program would continue even if the Senate failed to pass the bill authorizing an additional $2 Billion.  His answer:

Any deal that’s been made that’s in the pipeline…any deal where they filed the paperwork…uh…and we’re evaluating it…uh… and making adjustments…uh…any deal that’s in the pipeline will be paid.

So does “in the pipeline” mean the dealer has already submitted the claim to the balky computer system?  What about the claims they haven’t been able to submit yet?  And what are these “adjustments” to the dealer’s claim?   LaHood’s answer would certainly not be very reassuring to a dealer who has put, say, $100,000 of her own money on the line, but hasn’t been able to submit the claims through the system.

• On Sunday a Department of Transportation spokesman passed the buck.  It turns out the government outsourced clunker claims processing to Citigroup, the banking conglomerate that was already given more than $350 Billion in bailout cash because it was “too big to fail.”  Apparently it wasn’t too big to fail it’s assignment to process Clunker claims.  When asked by reporters for a reaction Nina Das, a spokeswoman for Citibank, said only:

“The DoT is pleased with the Citi partnership in this important effort.”

But Don’t Worry About Your Health!

When the Clunker guys in Congress turn over control of some 1,300 health insurance companies, plus the government’s new health plan, to “The Commissioner of Health Care,”  Superior, government intelligence will ensure that:

• you don’t go without any needed medical treatment;
• you won’t be stuck on an endless waiting list;
• you won’t be denied care because you or your doctor or the nurse or the technician can’t access a computer system through a Citibank website;
  
• the company you paid your premiums to won’t run out of cash to pay your medical bills, even though it will be saddled with expensive new government mandates.
  

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Two weeks ago the House passed another giant piece of legislation, the 1,200 page energy/global warming bill.  This one came with three hundred pages of fine-print amendments that were only partially written.  That’s right, now that the amendments have passed, whoever controls the writing, can write anything!  Your representative does not know what he voted for.

A group called “Let Freedom Ring” has developed a simple pledge for Congressmen and Senators to sign.  Here it is:

Below is a 3.5 minute video about the pledge and the group circulating it.

While Liberty Works certainly supports this pledge, we are dismayed that we The People have been reduced to making such a pitiful plea to arrogant, autocratic politicians.

It is a direct, unambiguous violation of the US Constitution for the government to do any of the following:

• Regulate the price or terms of a health insurance policy;
• Provide health insurance or medical services to anyone except military personnel and government employees;
• Control the prices of medical services or drugs;
• Regulate local hospitals;
• Require that hospitals and clinics get permission from the government before buying equipment or machinery or buildings;

Yet the government does, and has done all of the above for decades. The result of continuously escalating government intervention is a chaotic mishmash of government and heavily regulated private sector insurance and medical services.

Now, under the leadership of Barack Obama, Democrats in the House and Senate are striving to dramatically increase government intervention, as if a lack of enough bureaucrats were the problem, and thousands more pages of fine print regulations would somehow lower the price of and improve the quality of medical care.

There is simply no historical example of improvements in medical care from government intervention.  Obama-care should not even be under consideration.

But, at the very least, Congressmen and Senators should read the wretched thing before they vote on it.  Perhaps this pledge is the best idea to prevent passage.  The bill will be be thousands of pages and few if any Senators and Representatives can actually comprehend it all, understand how it will all work and what the actual consequences will be.  In reality, there is no way to predict the consequences of new government intervention so vast and complex that it takes thousands of pages to describe.

Of course it would be an improvement over recent experience if the bill were actually written in advance, so that the version Senate and House will vote on could indeed be posted on the Internet for 72 hours.  But one has to ask, what good is  72 hours for the public to digest thousands of pages of legalese?  Why not 72 days, at least?

Why is Obama-care so urgent?  Why is it so important for Congress to pass a sweeping “overhaul” that will effect every American, for decades to come, before September?  Because the longer the details are out there the more opposition will develop!  Obama and the Democrats know they have to pass it quickly, before The People find out what’s coming at them from Washington, or it won’t pass at all.

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The Facts:

• Iran has been developing nuclear weapons for a decade.  The Bush administration and a coalition of European governments failed for eight years to reach a so-called “diplomatic solution” that would persuade the Iranians to abandon their nuclear weapons program.
• Barack Obama and the Democrats claimed Iran could be persuaded if only someone other than George W. Bush were leading the diplomatic effort.   But European leaders tried for years, with and without Bush, with and without other American officials, to persuade the Iranians without sliver of success.
• The government of Iran is a theocratic dictatorship.  The supreme ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khameneii, does not submit to the election process. He was chosen by a “council” of Mullas.
• President Obama arrogantly believes that his good intentions and the power of his personality can do what nobody else could, persuade the Mullahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions
• Last week’s Iranian election was for President, an office with limited authority, that is answerable to Ayatollah Khameni.  So the election was largely a sham.  Even so, brave candidates who oppose theocratic rule ran for President and one of them appeared in pre-election polls to be ahead by a substantial majority.  Indeed the government even told him he had won, before reversing itself and announcing that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the lunatic incumbent had won another term.
• It seems to be beyond any reasonable doubt that the vote count was rigged.
  
• There have been four straight days of enormous protest demonstrations in the streets of Tehran, the capital.  Government troops and police have begun employing violent measures to try to disperse the demonstrators.  Foreign journalists are being expelled from the country. AP reports eight people have been shot to death by a government sponsored militia.
  

As the world watches, Iran could be on the cusp of a revolution that ends up deposing the theocratic dictatorship.  This is an opportunity for the President of the United States, to express principled support the Iranian people in their struggle against tyranny.   What has  President Obama said so far?  Here are some samples of his tepid remarks:

It is up to Iranians to make decisions as to who Iran’s leaders will be.  ffffffffffffffffffff

Which Iranians?  The  Mullahs or the Iranian People?  How can the people choose leaders when the elections are irrelevant?  Why can’t the American President speak clearly and unambiguously for liberty?

I am deeply troubled by the violence I have seen on television.  The democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent, those are universal values and need to be respected.

This reveals Obama’s bureaucratic affinity for process over the principles that motivate people to risk their lives and safety in rebellion against illegitimate despots.  The universal values at stake are liberty, and sovereignty of the individual, and limited government charged with protecting rather than curtailing natural rights.  Democratic processes that permit dissent and free speech are necessary for the maintenance of liberty.

There appears to be a sense on the part of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed…

This election was not worthy of anyone being hopefully engaged and committed to democracy.  Regardless of the outcome, the same Mullahs would still have been supreme rulers, calling the shots.  It should be obvious, even to Obama, that the people of Iran are fed up with incompetent, theocratic rule.  It should be obvious that the election was merely the spark that ignited an explosion of seething anger that has been smoldering just below the surface for a long time.  This is the moment for America to stand in support of people who are taking enormous personal risk to fight for freedom.

One more quote from President Obama

It’s not productive given the history of US Iranian relations for the US president to be seen as meddling in Iranian elections.

Again, Obama speaks reverently of the Iranian election as if it were a legitimate process, not to be influenced by outsiders.  In reality it was close to meaningless.  The hundreds of thousands of people who have taken to the streets of Teheren are motivated by complaints that are more fundamental than a sham election whose outcome mattered little to the reality of oppression by an unaccountable, theocratic regime.

It appears that the American President is more committed to his plan to “engage” the ruthless Iranian rulers, through “diplomacy”  than to the hopes and aspirations of oppressed people, who may complicate his plan with a messy, popular revolt against those rulers.

Before we allow Congress to contrive more Unconstitutional government health care intervention, on top of Medicare, Medicaid and the existing layers of regulations, we should take a second look at President Obama’s first big, Unconstitutional intervention, the $787 Billion stimulus or “recovery plan.”  The promise was that if Congress enacted the “recovery plan” immediately, job losses would decrease immediately.  Unemployment would be limited to no more than  7.9%.  Congress passed the measure just three weeks after Obama was inaugurated, in an atmosphere of dramatic urgency.

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Nancy Pelosi has given several contradictory statements regarding her role in the Congressional committee that oversees CIA’s secret operations, including aggressive interrogation techniques that have been called “torture” by some politicians.

The political-media establishment, including Commentators on the right have focused on Speaker Pelosi’s embarrassingly  incompetent press conference yesterday where she was incoherent in her attempt to escape accountability for having heard any CIA briefings, by accusing the CIA of lies and deceit.

It seems they’re all stuck in an inconsequential debate over minutia, while ignoring the elephant in the room: the motives of those who stirred up this debate in the first place.

This is about partisan politics, about discrediting George W. Bush, and thus diminishing Republican votes in future elections.  That’s all.

The military and the CIA captured hundreds of terrorists during the first eighteen months after the 9-11-01 attacks and the CIA used aggressive interrogation techniques to gain what turned out to be critically valuable information from some of them.

Back then, opinion polls showed overwhelming approval for any means necessary to neutralize Al Qaeda and it’s associated network of terrorist cells.  Indeed, President Bush’s approval ratings soared above 80% because he spoke forcefully of his commitment to kill or capture those who were responsible and  were planning follow-up attacks.  No politician would have dared to publically object to interrogation techniques that caused a detainee to become fearful or suffer pain, but not permanent injury.

But as Bush’s personal popularity eroded Democrats became emboldened, launching what has become a six or seven year noise campaign to plant in the public mind the perception that Bush authorized senseless, gratuitous torture, inflicted by fiendish CIA agents.

Partisan Democrats, including President Obama, have overdosed on sanctimonious indignation, performed for the cameras, asserting that water-boarding and other, unnamed techniques were torture, were illegal, violated our values, enraged the rest of the world, etc.  They hurled a thousand times more vitriol at Bush and the CIA than at the barbaric terrorists who committed unspeakable acts of torture all over the world.

In their hearts, they don’t really care any more than the rest of us if a terrorist who has murdered hundreds of people suffers enhanced interrogation, or for that matter, even full blown torture, if it yields valuable information that saves America from future attacks.  But their “base” of anti-war, blame-America Lefties loves the performance and all the noxious noise influences masses of voters who lack the time or inclination to study the issue and figure out what it’s really about.

Some of their assertions are absurd.  For example they claimed these techniques never yield any information of value.  Then when presented with reality, that information gained this way enabled the CIA and military to head off subsequent attacks they cliim the same information could have been acquired in other ways.  Of course they never say what those other ways are.

This political game, discrediting the CIA and threatening its staff with prosecution just to tarnish Bush and the Republicans has  serious consequences.  It undermines the war on terror and makes America more vulnerable if CIA personal come to believe that interrogating terrorists and extracting valuable information can make them the targets of politically motivated retribution years later.  Today, CIA Director Leon Panetta, a former Democrat Congressman who was just appointed to the position by President Obama, showed some leadership strength with a public letter to all agency staff.  Some excerpts:

There is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business. It predates my service with this great institution, and it will be around long after I’m gone. But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress…

My advice — indeed, my direction — to you is straightforward: ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission. We have too much work to do to be distracted from our job of protecting this country…

We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism, and dedication. Our task is to tell it like it is-even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.”

By making this letter public, Mr. Panetta seems to be warning his former collegues in Congress that he is not willing to allow the agency he now leads to be taken down by their politically motivated tirades.   While we have often disagreed with Panetta in the past we salute him for taking a principled stand on this issue.  An ineffective CIA, staffed by people who fear their successes will bring about hindsight political persecution in the future, would leave America far more vulnerable in a treacherous world.