Jewish world Review (www.jewishworldreview.com) recently published an article by Bill O’Reilly in which he provides some perspective on the left’s “class warfare” and the contributions of the “one percent”:

Growing up in Levittown out on Long Island, I remember my father buying pants through the mail. This seemed strange to me. There was a Robert Hall clothing store nearby, and it had pants all over the place. But my dad said he could buy two pair for the price of one from some guy in South Dakota. One problem: The pants never fit.
My father didn’t much care. He saved some money, which he put in the bank, affording me an opportunity to go to private schools.
My parents never wanted to be rich and did not resent those who were…  The truth is, we O’Reillys did not even know any rich people. They lived in Garden City, about five miles away.

Today, I am a rich guy, a 1 percenter. I can buy all the pants I want. My late father could not even fathom how much money I make. I have trouble processing it, as well.
~~~~~
Today, the Occupy Wall Street crew and many progressive Americans believe that I am a greed head, even though they have no idea what I do with my money. Just the fact that I have it gives them license to brand me a dreadful “1 percenter.”
The reason that I have prospered monetarily is that I put freedom to good use. I worked hard, got a great education, paid my dues in journalism and, finally, hit it big. America gave me the freedom to do all those things…. Now, more than a few folks say I am not paying my fair share to ensure the security of my fellow citizens.

According to the IRS, the 1.4 million households that comprise the 1 percent (that is taking in about $350,000 a year) pay 37 percent of the nation’s income tax. That’s a big number, is it not? And The New York Times reports that the 1 percenters contributed about 30 percent of all charitable donations in 2007. Another big number.

So I’ve decided that those demanding more of my money for “social justice” are really attacking freedom. In this country, it is not wrong to prosper. You should not be demeaned for “having.”

President Obama will be doing the nation a huge disservice if he bases his upcoming campaign on class warfare, because that’s really an assault on individual freedom. Yes, we are all Americans, and we should all be in it together. But that doesn’t mean the government can guarantee individual outcomes. In a free society, it can’t.

Please read the entire article at:  http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/oreilly.php3

THE NUMBERS THAT SHOW HOW BAD THE ECONOMY REALLY IS

Consumer Sentiment Falls to Lowest Level Since March 2009

Growth anemic, debt fight poses recession risk

African-American Middle Class Eroding As Unemployment Rate Soars

Worst Case Scenario Confirmed: Muslim Brotherhood joins negotiations on Egypt crisis.

Obama concedes terror group is anti-American yet downplays significance of acceptance

JewishWorldReview.com |
AIRO — (MCT) Opposition groups including the banned Muslim Brotherhood held landmark talks Sunday with Egypt’s vice president, but the two sides remained at apparent loggerheads over opponents’ principal demand: that President Hosni Mubarak step aside now.

The government offered up a number of new concessions that would have constituted an undreamed-of bonanza for the opposition only a few weeks ago. But demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square shrugged off the conciliatory steps, saying nothing less than Mubarak’s departure would satisfy them.

Protesters by the thousands continued their round-the-clock occupation of the sprawling plaza, which has taken on the air of a mini-city within a city. However, revolutionary fervor was increasingly at odds with the urgent wishes of many Egyptians to resume their normal routines.

Banks, along with many shops and businesses, reopened Sunday, the first day of the Egyptian workweek. Traffic surged on previously empty roadways.

In talks with some opposition groups, Vice President Omar Suleiman dangled the possibility of abolishing Egypt’s state of emergency, a widely loathed 30-year-old decree that gives sweeping powers to the security establishment.

Suleiman also offered what amounted to an amnesty for nonviolent protesters, greater press freedoms, formal redress for those seized by the secret police, and the creation of a broadly representative committee to work on constitutional reforms. But most in the square expressed skepticism that there would be follow-through on such pledges.

Still, Suleiman’s face-to-face talks that included the Brotherhood, which has been outlawed since the 1950s, were momentous for a government that for decades has attempted to isolate that organization through intimidation and the arrests of thousands of its members. Inviting the nation’s largest opposition party — one that supports a constitution based on Islamic law — into negotiations reveals how much Egypt’s political landscape has changed in the last two weeks.

In Washington, political officials and diplomatic experts applauded the talks, saying they could represent a turning point in the crisis.

It’s “frankly quite extraordinary,” said Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in an interview on NBC’s ”Meet the Press.” He called progress on lifting the longtime emergency law a “major, major opening of the door to the democratic process.”

President Barack Obama, in a pre-Superbowl interview with Fox News, said that “Egypt is not going to go back to what it was.”

Obama described the Muslim Brotherhood as a well-organized group with anti-American rhetoric, but he downplayed the group’s size and influence in Egypt and as a potential part of any new governing coalition.

“I think the Muslim Brotherhood is one faction in Egypt,” he told Fox’s Bill O’Reilly. “They are “well-organized,” he said, and “there are strains of the ideology that are anti-U.S.”

“It’s important for us not to say our only two options are the Muslim Brotherhood or a suppressed Egyptian people,” Obama said.

As has been his practice in recent days, Obama avoided saying that Mubarak should resign immediately. It remains unclear if the Egyptian government and the Brotherhood and other opposition groups can reach compromises on reform and other changes while Mubarak is in power.

Opposition groups have said they have not abandoned their demands that Mubarak step down. Sunday’s talks, however, allowed the government to show it was attempting to meet protesters’ demands while granting opposition parties a rare seat at the center of power.

In an apparent bid to halt the protests, Mubarak recently promised that neither he nor his son Gamal would run in the presidential election scheduled for September. He shook up his Cabinet, and the leadership of the ruling party, including his son, resigned.

But the longtime leader has dug in his heels on the protesters’ demand that he leave office immediately, saying his abrupt departure would trigger chaos and pave the way for a takeover by Islamists.

In a communique issued after Sunday’s talks, endorsed by the opposition groups taking part, Suleiman promised a full investigation of the abrupt pullback of police in cities nine days ago — a move that triggered a wave of looting — and also a probe of last week’s violent and seemingly carefully choreographed attack on the square by groups supporting the regime.

The talks Sunday drew criticism from one key opposition leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, who said he would not negotiate with the government until Mubarak stepped down.

“The whole idea was to move that regime to a new regime,” ElBaradei said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.” “Mubarak continues to be a symbol of that old regime, and I will not give any legitimacy to that existing regime.”

He proposed the creation of a transitional presidential council, including Suleiman or an army representative along with civilians, that would prepare the country for free and fair elections. Any elections before “the right people establish parties and engage” would be “fake democracy,” he said.

Although ElBaradei did not join Sunday’s talks, a representative of his National Front for Change attended.

Soldiers, meanwhile, continued to tighten their cordon around Tahrir Square, though demonstrators were still permitted to come and go. On Sunday, the 13th day of the uprising, families were back out in force — unlike on some previous days when the crowd was dominated by men grimly making ready to fight off gangs of pro-Mubarak partisans.

Larry Elder

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Ronald Reagan “tortured” blacks. Tavis Smiley, the PBS television host, once said this about the former president. NBC’s Bryant Gumbel and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, among many others, consider Reagan a racist.

“There they go again,” as Reagan might have said.

The economic lot for blacks and Hispanics improved far more than it did for whites after Reagan’s steep tax cuts. In late 1982, Reagan’s second year in office, the unemployment rate for blacks was 20.4 percent. By 1989, his last year, the black unemployment rate had fallen to 11.4 percent — a 9 percent drop. In late 1982, the unemployment rate for Hispanics was 15.3 percent. By 1989, it had fallen to 8 percent — a drop of over 7 percentage points. White unemployment, by contrast, fell “only” 4 percentage points.

What about black-owned businesses? In 1982, according to the Census Bureau, there were 308,000 black-owned businesses. By 1987, the number had increased to 424,000, up 38 percent. The number of all U.S. businesses was up “only” 14 percent. Receipts for black-owned businesses went from less than $10 billion to nearly $20 billion — a 100 percent increase.

But didn’t Reagan apply the “racist” so-called “Southern Strategy” to get elected? And weren’t the Southern Republicans on whom Reagan relied merely racist former Dixiecrats chased into the GOP’s open arms on the issue of civil rights?

Pat Buchanan, former Richard Nixon speechwriter, invented the term “Southern strategy.” “We would build our Republican Party,” he said, “on a foundation of states’ rights, human rights, small government and a strong national defense, and leave it to the ‘party of (Democratic Georgia Gov. Lester) Maddox, (1966 Democratic challenger against Spiro Agnew for Maryland governor George) Mahoney and (Democratic Alabama Gov. George) Wallace to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice.’”

For over 100 years after the end of the Civil War, Southern whites supported de facto and de jure segregation against blacks. Yet Southerners, unlike Democrats in other parts of the country, believed in low taxes, smaller government and a strong national defense. On social and cultural issues, Southerners were more religious and less supportive of abortion. Racism against blacks was the glue that bound the South to the Democratic Party.

Then came the modern civil rights movement, followed by the civil rights acts of the ’60s. Southern whites knew their world had forever changed. Racism — legally, politically and morally — was in full retreat. With segregation as a dying issue, Southerners turned their attention to other matter: low taxes, smaller government and support for the Vietnam War and a strong national defense. The Republican Party fit their political views and cultural values more than did the Democratic Party. How could the GOP serve as a refuge for bigots when the party’s House and Senate members voted for the civil rights acts, by percentage, more than did their Democratic counterparts?

But didn’t Reagan appeal to Southern racism by giving a “states’ rights” speech in Philadelphia, Miss., a town immortalized in the movie “Mississippi Burning”? In 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered there. To the left, “states’ rights” is code for preferred parking at a Klan rally.

Reagan spoke for 15 minutes at the Neshoba County Fair, about seven miles outside of Philadelphia, in that politically “in-play” state carried by Jimmy Carter four years earlier by 14,000 votes. Eight years later, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis spoke at the same Neshoba fair.

Here’s what Reagan said at the fair about “states’ rights”: “Programs like education and others that should be turned back to the states and the local communities with the tax sources to fund them. I believe in states’ rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and the private level.”

Not exactly, “Turn back the clock!” And immediately following his speech, Reagan headed to New York, where he spoke before the Urban League, one of the nation’s oldest black civil rights organizations.

Yes, Reagan opposed race-based government “affirmative action.” Democratic icon President Jack Kennedy, in a 1963 interview, said: “I don’t think we can undo the past. In fact, the past is going to be with us for a good many years in uneducated men and women who lost their chance for a decent education. We have to do the best we can now … but not hard and fast quotas. We are too mixed, this society of ours, to begin to divide ourselves on the basis of race or color.”

Even among blacks in the 1960s, there was opposition to state-sponsored racial preferences. Bayard Rustin, a top MLK aide who was gay, opposed preferences. So did the National Urban League board of directors.

Reagan hired future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and future Secretary of State Colin Powell. He signed legislation making Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday and signed an extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act for another 25 years. He granted amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal aliens.

Ronald Reagan was no racist. Happy 100th, Mr. President.

Larry Elder is a noted author.  His most recent book is: 

Caroline B. Glick: Celebrate Arab democracy?.

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |Over the past week, Israel has been criticized for being insufficiently supportive of democratic change in Egypt. While Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been careful to praise the cause of democracy while warning against the dangers of an Islamic takeover of the most populous Arab state, many Israelis have not been so diplomatic.

To understand why, it is necessary to take a little tour of the Arab world.

In the midst of Tunisia’s revolution last month, the Jewish Agency mobilized to evacuate any members of the country’s Jewish community who wished to leave. Until the end of French colonial rule in 1956, Tunisia’s Jewish community numbered 100,000 members. But like all Jewish communities in the Arab world the advent of Arab nationalism in the mid-20th century forced the overwhelming majority of Tunisia’s Jews to leave the country. Today, with between 1,500 and 3000 members, Tunisia’s tiny Jewish community is among the largest in the Arab world.

So far, six families have left for Israel. Many more may follow. Two weeks ago Daniel Cohen from Tunis’s Jewish community told Haaretz, “If the situation continues as it is now, we will definitely have to leave or immigrate to Israel.”

Since then, Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia’s Islamist party Ennahdha, returned to Tunisia 22 years living in exile in London. He was sentenced to life in prison in absentia by the regime of ousted president Zine al-Abdine Ben Ali on terrorism charges.

Then on Monday night unidentified assailants set fire to a synagogue in the town of Ghabes and burned the Torah scrolls. In an interview with AFP, Trabelsi Perez, President of the Ghriba synagogue said the crime was made all the more shocking by the fact that it occurred as police were stationed close by.

The day after the attack Roger Bismuth, President of Tunisia’s Jewish community disputed the view that the scorching of Torah scrolls had anything to do with anti-Semitism. The man responsible for representing Tunisia’s Jewish community before the evolving new regime told The Jerusalem Post that the attack was the fault of the Jews themselves, “because they left [the synagogue] open…This is not an attack on the Jewish community.”

The fear now gripping the Jews of Tunisia is not surprising. The same fear gripped the much smaller Iraqi Jewish community after the US and Britain toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003. The Iraqi community was the oldest, and arguably the most successful Jewish community in the Arab world until World War II. Its 150,000 members were leading businessmen and civil servants during the period of British rule.

Following the establishment of Israel, the Iraqi government revoked the citizenship of the country’s Jews, forced them to flee and stole their property down to their wedding rings. The expropriated property of Iraqi Jewry is valued today at more than $4 billion.

Only 7,000 Jews remained in Iraq after the mass aliya(ascension) of 1951. By the time Saddam was toppled in 2003, only 32 Jews remained. They were mainly elderly, and impoverished. And owing to al Qaida threats and government harassment, they were all forced to flee.

Shortly after they overthrew Saddam, US forces found the archives of the Jewish community submerged in a flooded basement of a secret police building in Baghdad. The archive was dried and frozen and sent to the US for preservation. Last year, despite the fact that Saddam’s secret police only had the archive because they stole it from the Jews, the Iraqi government demanded its return as a national treasure.

As embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak began his counteroffensive against the anti-regime protesters, his mouthpieces began alleging that the protesters were incited by the Mossad. For their part, the anti-regime protesters claim that Mubarak is an Israeli puppet. The protesters brandish placards with Mubarak’s image plastered with Stars of David. A photo of an effigy of newly appointed Vice President and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman burned in Tahrir Square showed him portrayed as a Jew.

Wednesday night, Channel 10′s Arab affairs commentator Zvi Yehezkeli ran a depressing report on the status of the graves of Jewish sages buried in the Muslim world.

The report chronicled the travels of Rabbi Yisrael Gabbai, a fervently–Orthodox rabbi who has taken upon himself to travel to save these important shrines. As Yehezkeli reported, last week Gabbai travelled to Iran and visited the graves of Purim heroes Queen Esther and Mordechai the Jew, the prophets Daniel and Habbakuk.

He was moved to travel to Iran after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered Esther’s and Mordechai’s tomb destroyed. The Iranian media followed up Ahmadinejad’s edict with a campaign claiming that Esther and Mordechai were responsible for the murder of 170,000 Iranians.

Gabbai’s travels have brought him to Iran, Gaza, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and beyond. And throughout the Arab and Muslim world, like the dwindling Jewish communities, Jewish cemeteries are targets for anti-Semitic attacks. “We’re talking about thousands of cemeteries throughout the Arab world. It’s the same problem everywhere,” he said. Israelis have been overwhelmingly outspoken in our criticism of Western support for the anti-regime forces in Egypt due to our deep-seated concern that the current regime will be replaced by a regime dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Representing a minimum of 30 percent of Egyptians, the Muslim Brotherhood is the only well organized political force in the country outside the regime.

Their organizational prowess and willingness to use violence to achieve their aims was likely demonstrated within hours of the start of the unrest. Shortly after the demonstrations began, operatives from the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood branch in Gaza — that is Hamas — knew to cross the border into the Sinai. And last Thursday, a police station in Suez was attacked with RPGs and firebombs.

Hamas has a long history of operations in the Sinai. It also has close ties with Beduin gangs in the area who were reportedly involved in attacking another police station in northern Sinai.

Western — and particularly American — willingness to pretend that the Muslim Brotherhood is anything other than a totalitarian movement has been greeted by disbelief and astonishment by Israelis from across the political spectrum.

It is the likelihood that the Muslim Brotherhood will rise to power, not an aversion to Arab democracy that has caused Israel to fear the popular revolt against President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. If the Muslim Brotherhood were not a factor in Egypt, then Israel would probably have simply been indifferent to events there as it has been to the development of democracy in Iraq and to the popular revolt in Tunisia.

Israel’s indifference to democratization of the Arab world has been a cause of consternation for some of its traditional supporters in conservative circles in the US and Europe. Israelis are accused of provincialism. As citizens of the only democracy in the Middle East, we are admonished for not supporting democracy among our neighbors. The fact is that Israeli indifference to democratic currents in Arab societies is not due to provincialism. Israelis are indifferent because we realize that whether under authoritarian rule or democracy, anti-Semitism is the unifying sentiment of the Arab world. Fractured along socioeconomic, tribal, religious, political, ethnic and other lines, the glue that binds Arab societies is hatred of Jews.

A Pew opinion survey of Arab attitudes towards Jews from June 2009 makes this clear. 95 percent of Egyptians, 97 percent of Jordanians and Palestinians and 98 percent of Lebanese expressed unfavorable opinions of Jews. Three-quarters of Turks, Pakistanis and Indonesians also expressed hostile views of Jews.

Throughout the Arab and Muslim world, genocidal anti-Semitic propaganda is all-pervasive. And as Prof. Robert Wistrich has written, “The ubiquity of the hate and prejudice exemplified by this hard-core anti-Semitism undoubtedly exceeds the demonization of earlier historical periods — whether the Christian Middle Ages, the Spanish Inquisition, the Dreyfus Affair in France, or the Judeophobia of Tsarist Russia. The only comparable example would be that of Nazi Germany in which we can also speak of an’eliminationist anti-Semitism’ of genocidal dimensions, which ultimately culminated in the Holocaust.”

That is why for most Israelis, the issue of how Arabs are governed is as irrelevant as the results of the 1852 US Presidential elections were for American blacks. Since both parties excluded them, they were indifferent to who was in power.

What these numbers, and the anti-Semitic behavior of Arabs show Israelis is that it makes no difference which regime rules where. As long as the Arab peoples hate Jews, there will be no peace between their countries and Israel. No one will be better for Israel than Mubarak. They can only be the same or worse.

This is why no one expected for the democratically elected Iraqi government to sign a peace treaty with Israel or even end Iraq’s official state of war with the Jewish state. Indeed, Iraq remains in an official state of war with Israel. And after independent lawmaker Mithal al-Alusi visited Israel in 2008, two of his sons were murdered. Alusi’s life remains under constant threat.

One of the more troubling aspects of the Western media coverage of the tumult in Egypt over the past two weeks has been the media’s move to airbrush out all evidence of the protesters’ anti-Semitism.

As John Rosenthal pointed out this week at the Weekly Standard, Germany’s Die Welt ran a front page photo which featured a poster of Mubarak with a Star of David across his forehead in the background. The photo caption made no mention of the anti-Semitic image. And its online edition did not run the picture.

And as author Bruce Bawer noted at Pajamas Media website, Jeanne Moos of CNN scanned the protesters’ signs, noting how authentic and heartwarming their misspelled English messages were yet failed to mention that one of the signs she showed portrayed Mubarak as a Jew.

Given the Western media’s obsessive coverage of the Arab-Israel conflict, at first blush it seems odd that they would ignore the prevalence of anti-Semitism among the presumably pro-democracy protesters. But on second thought, it isn’t that surprising.

If the media reported on the overwhelming Jew hatred in the Arab world generally and in Egypt specifically, it would ruin the narrative of the Arab conflict with Israel. That narrative explains the roots of the conflict as frustrated Arab-Palestinian nationalism. It steadfastly denies any more deeply-seated antipathy of Jews that is projected onto the Jewish state. The fact that the one Jewish state stands alone against 23 Arab states and 57 Muslim states whose populations are united in their hatred of Jews necessarily requires a revision of the narrative. And so their hatred is ignored.

But Israelis don’t need CNN to tell us how our neighbors feel about us. We know already. And because we know, while we wish them the best of luck with their democracy movements, and would welcome the advent of a tolerant society in Egypt, we recognize that that tolerance will end when it comes to the Jews. And so whether they are democrats or autocrats, we fully expect they will continue to hate us.

JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

Columnist Larry Elder published a thought provoking article at http://www.JewishWorldReview.com entitled: “President Obama, Make the Case for Afghanistan — or Get Out”.  In it, he makes THE important point regarding any war to be fought by US troops:  If the US is not TOTALLY committed to win a war, it is immoral to ask the youth of our nation to leave their homes and risk all to pursue it.

Evidently, we did not learn that important lesson for which we paid 50,000 precious American lives (not to mention most of our country’s global credibility) in Vietnam.  Our government owes the American people, particularly those who are sent to fight this war:

1. A clearly defined objective  What does “winning” this war actually mean?
2. A total commitment to “win” this war as quickly possible with the minimum loss of American lives.
3. Or, in the alternative, Immediate withdrawal.

Excerpts from Mr. Elder’s commentary:

We need “a warrior,” not “a flower child.”
The anguished mother of an American soldier killed in Afghanistan said this about President Barack Obama. She objects to the rules of engagement, which she feels caused her son’s death. The recent Rolling Stone piece on the former Afghanistan commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, showed widespread troop disapproval of these rules, designed to minimize civilian casualties but which increase the danger to coalition soldiers in the field.
But this is the mindset of Obama.

As a candidate for president, Obama criticized President George W. Bush for “wrongly” taking the nation to war in Iraq and thus “neglecting” Afghanistan. Then President Obama spent months deciding whether to agree to the 40,000 additional troops requested by McChrystal, whom Obama appointed after firing his successor. Reportedly, the general wanted 80,000 more troops but scaled it down after fierce resistance. And Obama agreed to a goal of recruiting and training approximately 250,000 Afghan troops and police, well short of the 400,000 requested by McChrystal.

Finally agreeing to an increase of 30,000 troops, Obama simultaneously announced that in July 2011, troops will begin coming home. Afghan political analyst Ahmad Sayedi predicted this announcement would embolden Afghan terrorists: “When the USA sets a timeline of 18 months for troop withdraw, this by itself boosts the morale of the opponents and makes them less likely to take any step towards reconciliation.” Sen. John McCain recently said, “You cannot tell the enemy when you’re leaving in warfare and expect your strategy to be able to prevail.”

The “war of necessity” became the schizophrenic war.

How stupid can one administration be????  Commit or get out!

Please enjoy the full article at:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/elder070110.php3

Thomas Sowell, as usual, cuts through the political demagoguery and CYA positioning surrounding the Gulf oil spill. In a pair of articles published at http://www.JewishWorldReview.com entitled “Oil and Snake Oil” and “Degeneration of Democracy” he calls us back to reason and establishes the central issues for our consideration.

I, personally, find it interesting that through all the rhetoric and finger pointing (which reminds me of my second grade class when our very stern looking teacher steps back into the room after a brief absence and stands glaring with her arms crossed) no one has presented one iota of evidence that BP has done anything illegal. Until that happens, BP must be considered the unfortunate victim of a terrible accident.  (What a concept: innocent until proven guilty!) In which case they are being crucified to help compound their misfortune and provide political currency.

The big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is bad enough in itself. But politics can make anything worse.
Let’s stop and think. Either the government knows how to stop the oil spill or they don’t. If they know how to stop it, then why have they let thousands of barrels of oil per day keep gushing out, for weeks on end? All they have to do is tell BP to step aside, while the government comes in to do it right.
If they don’t know, then what is all this political grandstanding about keeping their boot on the neck of BP, the Attorney General of the United States going down to the Gulf to threaten lawsuits— on what charges was unspecified— and President Obama showing up in his shirt sleeves?
Just what is Obama going to do in his shirt sleeves, except impress the gullible? He might as well have shown up in a tuxedo with white tie, for all the difference it makes.
This government is not about governing. It is about creating an impression. That worked on the campaign trail in 2008, but it is a disaster in the White House, where rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
If the Obama administration was for real, and trying to help get the oil spill contained as soon as possible, the last thing its Attorney General would be doing is threatening a lawsuit. A lawsuit is not going to stop the oil, and creating a distraction can only make people at BP start directing their attention toward covering themselves, instead of covering the oil well.
If and when the Attorney General finds that BP did something illegal, that will be time enough to start a lawsuit. But making a public announcement at this time accomplishes absolutely nothing substantive. It is just more political grandstanding.
This is not about oil. This is about snake oil.

~~~~~AND~~~~~

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.
And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP’s oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated. But our government is supposed to be “a government of laws and not of men.” If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion– or $50 billion or $100 billion– then so be it.
But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without “due process of law.” Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.
With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.

If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don’t believe in Constitutional government. And, without Constitutional government, freedom cannot endure. There will always be a “crisis”– which, as the president’s chief of staff has said, cannot be allowed to “go to waste” as an opportunity to expand the government’s power.
That power will of course not be confined to BP or to the particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power, much less to the particular issues.

Please enjoy both commentaries in their entirety at:

Oil and Snake Oil

and:

Degeneration of Democracy

Nationally syndicated radio host and bestselling author, Monica Crowley, has published a thought provoking article at politicalmavens.com entitled “McChrystal Goes Rogue — Again”

Shortly after President Obama assumed the Commander-in-Chief duties, he retired the existing commanding general in Afghanistan and hand-picked his successor: General Stanley McChrystal. McChystal was always known as a brash and outspoken military man, an expert in counterinsurgency, greatly respected by the troops under his command, and as having little patience for fools.

His requirement to have to answer to Obama, then, was a trainwreck waiting to happen.

Last year, McChrystal made no secret of his desire to have as many as 80,000 additional troops to press the fight in Afghanistan. He went to the press to state that objective and to dismiss those, like VP Joe Biden, who opposed any kind of surge.

…while McChrystal was right on policy (never commit militarily to an operation without committing overwhelming force and having a clear plan), he was wrong to go public …

Today… McChrystal is being recalled  … to explain disrespectful comments he and his aides made to Rolling Stone magazine about Obama, Biden, other top national security officials, and the war strategy. Once again, McChrystal is right on policy (Obama is a destructive, disengaged, uninterested fool whose withdrawal timetable and ridiculous hamstringing rules of engagement are costing us lives and progress), but he was wrong to go public with that criticism.

~~~~~

But there are 2 big points to consider as this story unfolds:

1. McChyrstal is a four star general, graduate of West Point, has extensive combat experience and a chest full of medals. In other words, he knows what he’s doing. This was NOT a mistake. These comments were not “off the cuff” or limited to just one or two flippant remarks. And the interview was deliberately given to far-Left, anti-war Rolling Stone. None of this was a coincidence.

That can only mean one thing: that McChrystal is playing a game of chicken with Obama. He was daring Obama to respond. Obama runs a huge risk if he fires him. If the war goes under, it’ll be Obama’s fault for firing an insubordinate and prickly but effective general. If he doesn’t fire him, he may look weak and McChrystal will likely feel freer to do what he needs to do to win on the battlefield. Either way: McChrystal has made his point.

2. Many are asking today: Does Obama still have the necessary trust and confidence in McChrystal? I think the more appropriate and important question is: Does McChrystal have ANY trust and confidence in the Commander-in-Chief?

Please read the entire article and other interesting commentary at:

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2010/06/22/mcchrystal-goes-rogue-again/

Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman announced the newly named “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act”. It’s the same ‘ole crap it’s always been, claiming to create jobs, save the planet, etc. but now it has a logo.

Cap-&-Trade —> Climate Bill —> Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act

Here is a great introduction to the players, etc.

For those of you who are too “intelligent” to watch Glenn Beck, take a gander at this:

Crime Inc. Obama, Joel Rogers & Van Jones in : Collusion, Knowledge of the Lie

Here is a link to Senator Kerry’s site

Here is a draft of the bill

HATCH: CUTTING MEDICARE BY $465 BILLION TO FUND NEW GOVERNMENT PROGRAM ‘IRRESPONSIBLE’
Reid Bill Will Hurt 43 Million American Seniors and Disabled, Senator Says

WASHINGTON – Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, spoke out today against the $465 billion cuts in Medicare that are proposed in the misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590) now under consideration in the Senate.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Hatch said taking money from Medicare, which is already headed toward insolvency, and using that money to fund another government program “is irresponsible.”

“Again, the Reid bill cuts Medicare to create a new government entitlement program,” Hatch added. “More specifically, the Reid bill will cut nearly $135 billion from hospitals; $118 billion from Medicare Advantage; almost $15 billion from nursing homes; more than $40 billion from home health care agencies; and close to $8 billion from hospice providers. These cuts will threaten beneficiary access to care as Medicare providers find it more and more challenging to provide health services to Medicare patients …

“I cannot support any bill that would jeopardize health care coverage for Medicare beneficiaries and I truly believe if the bill before the Senate becomes law, Medicare beneficiaries’ health care coverage could be in serious trouble,” Hatch continued. “We owe it to the 43 million Americans – seniors and the disabled who depend on Medicare to reject the nonsensical Medicare cuts included in the Reid bill. We must have better solutions that will not hinder their ability to see the doctor of their choice.”

Sen. Hatch’s complete remarks on the Senate floor follow:

Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator McCain’s motion to recommit the Reid health care bill in order to eliminate the Medicare cuts contained in the legislation.

Throughout the health care debate, we have heard the President pledge not to “mess” with Medicare. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the bill before the Senate, H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. To be clear, the Reid bill reduces Medicare by $465 billion to fund a new government program. Unfortunately, our seniors and the disabled are the ones who suffer the consequences as a result of these reductions.

Medicare is very important to the 43 million seniors and disabled Americans covered by the program. Throughout my Senate career, I have fought to preserve and protect Medicare for both beneficiaries and providers. Medicare is already in trouble today – the program faces tremendous challenges in the very near future –the Medicare trust fund will be insolvent by 2017 and the program has more than $37 trillion in unfunded liabilities. The Reid bill will make a bad situation much worse.

Why is that the case? Again, the Reid bill cuts Medicare to create a new government entitlement program. More specifically, the Reid bill will cut nearly $135 billion from hospitals; $118 billion from Medicare Advantage; almost $15 billion from nursing homes; more than $40 billion from home health care agencies; and close to $8 billion from hospice providers. These cuts will threaten beneficiary access to care as Medicare providers find it more and more challenging to provide health services to Medicare patients.
In addition, the proposed legislation permanently cuts all annual Medicare provider payment updates; hospitals, home health agencies and hospice facilities would face even more annual reductions over the next 10 years. Advocates of these reductions, known as “productivity adjustments,” will argue that today, Medicare is overpaying certain providers because current payment updates do not take into account increases in productivity (which actually reduces the cost of providing beneficiaries health care services). To me, these permanent productivity adjustments will make it harder for Medicare providers to remain profitable as Medicare payments fail to keep up with the cost of providing health care services.

As result of these payment reductions, I believe that many doctors and other Medicare providers will stop seeing Medicare patients. In Utah, low Medicare reimbursement rates are already a serious problem for beneficiaries and their health care providers – these additional reductions will only make it more difficult.

I want to stress to my colleagues that cutting Medicare to pay for a new government program is irresponsible. Any reductions to Medicare should be used to preserve the program, not create a new government bureaucracy. I believe it makes more sense to target the Medicare savings for paying off Medicare’s unfunded liabilities or preventing the program’s future insolvency.

I would like to take a few minutes to talk about the Medicare Advantage program and how it is affected by the Reid bill. As I stated previously, the Reid bill reduces Medicare by close to $500 billion – almost $120 billion comes out of the Medicare Advantage program.

During the Finance Committee’s consideration of the Baucus health bill, I offered an amendment to protect extra benefits currently enjoyed by Medicare Advantage beneficiaries. Unfortunately, my amendment was defeated. In other words, the President’s pledge assuring Americans that they would not lose benefits was not met by either the Finance Committee bill or the Reid bill currently being considered by the Senate.

And here is how supporters of the Finance bill justified the Medicare Advantage reductions. They argued the extra benefits that would be cut – such as vision care, dental care, reduced hospital deductibles, lower copayments and premiums – were not statutory benefits offered in the Medicare fee-for-service program. Therefore, those extra benefits did not count.

A few weeks back, our President once again assured the American people they could keep their current health plan. “The first thing I want to make clear is that if you are happy with the insurance plan that you have right now, if the costs you’re paying and the benefits you’re getting are what you want them to be, then you can keep offering that same plan. Nobody will make you change it.”

I believe that promise should apply to all Americans, including those participating in the Medicare Advantage program. Congress is either going to protect existing benefits or not – it is that simple. Unfortunately, under the Reid bill, if you are a beneficiary participating in Medicare Advantage, that promise does not apply to you.
I have some history with the Medicare Advantage program — I served as a member of the House-Senate Conference Committee which wrote the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Among other things, this law created the Medicare Advantage Program.

When conference committee members were negotiating the conference report, several of us insisted that the Medicare Advantage program was necessary in order to provide health care coverage choices to Medicare beneficiaries. At that time, there were many parts of the country where Medicare beneficiaries did not have choice in coverage. In fact, the only choice offered to them was traditional, fee-for-service Medicare, a one size fits all government run health program.

By creating the Medicare Advantage program, we provided beneficiaries with choice in coverage and then, empowered them to make their own health care decisions as opposed to the federal government. Today, every Medicare beneficiary may choose from several health plans for his or her coverage.

Medicare Advantage works. Medicare + Choice and its predecessors did not because many plans in across the country, especially in rural areas were reimbursed at very low rates by the Medicare program. And I fear history could repeat itself if we are not careful.

Let me take a minute to talk about the Medicare + Choice program. I represent a state where Medicare managed care plans could not exist due to low reimbursement rates. To address that concern, Congress included language, which was signed into law, establishing a payment floor for rural areas. But, it was not enough. In fact, in Utah, all of the Medicare + Choice plans eventually left because they were operating in the red.

And this happened after promises were made that Medicare + Choice plans would be reimbursed fairly and that all Medicare beneficiaries would have access to these plans.

So, during the Medicare Modernization Act conference, we fixed the problem. First, we renamed the program Medicare Advantage. Second, we increased reimbursement rates so that all Medicare beneficiaries, regardless of where they lived – be it Fillmore, Utah or New York City –had choice in coverage. Again, we did not want beneficiaries stuck with a one-size fits all government plan.

Today, Medicare Advantage works. Every Medicare beneficiary has access to a Medicare Advantage plan. And close to 90 percent of Medicare beneficiaries participating in the program are satisfied with their health coverage. But that could all change should the health care reform legislation currently being considered become law.

Choice in coverage has made a difference in the lives of more than 10 million individuals nationwide. The extra benefits that I mentioned earlier are being portrayed as gym memberships as opposed to lower premiums, copayments and deductibles. And to be clear, the Silver Sneakers program is one that has made a difference in the lives of many seniors because it encourages them to get out of their homes and remain active. It has been helpful to those with serious weight issues and has been invaluable to women suffering from osteoporosis and joint problems. In fact, I have received several hundred letters telling me how much Medicare Advantage beneficiaries appreciate the program. Additionally, these beneficiaries receive other services such as coordinated chronic care management, dental coverage, vision care, and hearing aids.

Mr. President, in conclusion, I cannot support any bill that would jeopardize health care coverage for Medicare beneficiaries and I truly believe if the bill before the Senate becomes law, Medicare beneficiaries’ health care coverage could be in serious trouble.

We owe it to the 43 million Americans – seniors and the disabled who depend on Medicare to reject the nonsensical Medicare cuts included in the Reid bill. We must have better solutions that will not hinder their ability to see the doctor of their choice.

Look, I have been in the Senate for over 30 years. I pride myself for being bipartisan. I have co-authored many, many bipartisan health care bills since I first joined the Senate in 1977. Let me be clear – I want a health reform bill to pass this chamber but I want it to be a bipartisan bill that passes the Senate by 70 to 80 votes. If we could do it in 2003 when we considered the Medicare Prescription Drug legislation, we can do it today! There has never been a bill of this magnitude affecting so many American lives that has passed this chamber on a straight party-line vote. In the past, the Senate has approved many bipartisan health care bills that have eventually been signed into law. The Balanced Budget Act in 1997 which included the CHIP Program, the Ryan White Act, the Orphan Drug Act, The Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Hatch-Waxman Act are just a few of these success stories.

If the Senate passes this bill in its current form with a razor thin margin of 60 votes – this will be yet one more example of the arrogance of power since the Democrats secured a 60-vote majority in the United States Senate.

There is a better way to handle health care reform. First and foremost, it must be bipartisan. And second, we cannot erode the existing system that has provided quality and affordable health care to most Americans for decades. While we all agree that the current system should be improved, this bill is certainly not the answer.

If the Senate passes the McCain motion to recommit, we can begin work on a bipartisan health bill that will eliminate the overwhelming Medicare payment reductions, and, at the same time, address the serious issues facing the Medicare program in the near future.

I urge my colleagues to support the McCain motion to recommit this bill.

Source:
HATCH: CUTTING MEDICARE BY $465 BILLION TO FUND NEW GOVERNMENT PROGRAM ‘IRRESPONSIBLE’