Hubris in Action

One of the most useful characteristics of liberals is their hubris and capacity for self-delusion. After the “Miracle in Massachusetts” on Tuesday, which saw the Democrat – in one of the bluest of blue states, who was up by more than 30 points, who had Obama fly out to campaign for her – get convincingly trounced by a virtually unknown Republican, you’d think most Democrats would realize the electorate wasn’t buying what they’re selling.

You’d think so – but you’d be wrong. Incredibly, there are a lot of liberals running around saying that the voters in Massachusetts rejected Croakley because Obama and the Democrats weren’t liberal enough. They can’t comprehend that the electorate is rejecting Obamacare and have convinced themselves that these electoral reversals reflect voter anger that it’s taking to long to pass Obamacare. I am not making this up; you can’t make this stuff up!

Here are a couple of examples:

• Obama Needs to Come Out Fighting
  By E.J. Dionne
  
  Brown's victory is also a rebuke to a United States Senate that acted as if it had unlimited time to pass health care legislation and ignored how foolish its listless ways appear to normal human beings. … In the short term, Democrats have to make a quick decision on health care. The obvious path is for the House to pass the Senate's bill and send it to Obama's desk, while reaching agreement on certain changes that, under existing practices, can get through the Senate with fewer than 60 votes. It would be the equivalent of a political crime for Democrats to have invested so much in health reform only to let it die because of one election in one state.
• Pass Universal Coverage Now, Fix It Later
  By Froma Harrop
  
  Pass universal coverage now, fix it later. … Even though their reforms are superior, Democrats in Washington could have done better still by not trying to please everyone (including Republicans who were just playing with them). But despite their control of the White House and majorities in Congress, Democrats seemed capable only of reacting to critics, of cringing with fear under even the most ludicrous attacks.
  
  If you don't have the courage of your convictions, it doesn't matter whether your party has 59 or 60 or 65 seats in the Senate. Under President Bush, Republicans got whatever they wanted with 50 senators.
• The Massachusetts Election
  New York Times Editorial
  
  There are many theories about the import of Scott Brown’s upset victory in the race for Edward Kennedy’s former Senate seat. To our minds, it is not remotely a verdict on Mr. Obama’s presidency, nor does it amount to a national referendum on health care reform — even though it has upended the effort to pass a reform bill, which Mr. Obama made the centerpiece of his first year.
  
  Mr. Obama was right to press for health care reform. But he spent too much time talking to reluctant Democrats and Republicans who never had the slightest intention of supporting him. He sat on the sidelines while the Republicans bombarded Americans with false but effective talk of death panels and a government takeover of their doctors’ offices. And he did not make the case strongly enough that the health care system and the economy are deeply interconnected or explain why Americans should care about this huge issue in the midst of a recession: If they lose their jobs, they lose their health insurance.

Dear liberals, please, please, PLEASE keep up this kind of thinking. It will make victories in the 2010 mid-term elections so much easier!

EPIC FAIL

Mass. voters 'Tea' off on turncoat O
By MICHAEL GOODWIN
Last Updated: 9:20 AM, January 20, 2010
Posted: 3:53 AM, January 20, 2010
http://www.nypost.com/

A friend who toiled in the magazine business tells a story. In the mid-1970s, the publisher of their national news weekly took him to lunch to celebrate how well things were going. Circulation and ads were both roaring, making for happy campers all around.

As he clinked Martini glasses with my friend, the publisher declared, "The dogs like the dog food!"

The story's glib disdain for the customers comes as a well-timed metaphor. Unfortunately for President Obama, American voters don't like the crap he is plopping in their food dishes.

Now they are doing something about it. His health-care monstrosity has turned simmering discontent into a battle cry of resistance and cost him iron-clad control of the US Senate.

That Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts was the scene of the smack-down spells out the dimensions of the anger. Obama went to Harvard Law School, but apparently never learned the lessons of the first Boston Tea Party.

And so his arrogance and the heavy hand of big government sparked the second. A year to the day after he made history by taking the oath, he stands on the wrong side of a new American revolution.

It's hard to believe how quickly the nation has turned against Obama and the Democratic Party. Then again, it feels like an eternity since he swept into office on a tide of good will and hope.

Remember how he would unite the country? And boost the economy? As his faith in government grows, the public's faith in him declines. Even the stock market rose yesterday on expectations that the Obama agenda would be stalled.

It is a remarkable fall from grace for a man who squandered a mandate and basic trust. Even he cannot govern without the consent of the governed.

The victory by little-known Republican Scott Brown marks the third time where a state Obama won in 2008 has turned thumbs down on him in the last three months. Starting with Virginia and New Jersey, each GOP victory has sharpened the sense that he wildly overreached in forcing the country to take a sharp left turn.

While it is true he inherited an economic mess and two wars, the electorate is concluding his policies have made things worse. That fully half the country views his first year as a failure marks a record decline in presidential score keeping.

Obama has only himself to blame. While the far-left barons of Congress played their predictable part, the president has played their eager accomplice.

Historians will judge whether he led or followed them. For now, it's sufficient to say they are in the soup together.

Yet still they show only defiance. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed the health-care package would become law "one way or the other." With only about 35 percent of the public supporting it, she has picked a fight with an angry public. Does she not believe in democracy?

Most disheartening, the White House has boarded her ship of fools. Politico.com reports Obama will respond to the defeat with a "combative turn."

Apparently his hostility and contempt for dissent was his Mr. Nice Guy routine. The article quotes an aide saying the president has no doubts about his course and growing opposition "reinforces the conviction to fight hard."

This madness was echoed by White House flack Robert Gibbs, who chalked up the anger over the health bills to public ignorance of the benefits.

Yes, that must be it. It isn't possible the dogs don't really like the dog food!

It must be the packaging and the selling job. And so in coming days, watch as the best and brightest reach for shinier labels and loftier adjectives.

They should beware. These American dogs bite.

“Everything that follows is a bonus.”

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Survivor of 2 Atomic Blasts, Dies at 93
By MARK McDONALD

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only official survivor of both atomic blasts to hit Japan in World War II, died Monday in Nagasaki, Japan. He was 93.

The cause was stomach cancer, his family said.

Mr. Yamaguchi, as a 29-year-old engineer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, was in Hiroshima on a business trip when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. He was getting off a streetcar when the so-called Little Boy device detonated above the city.

Mr. Yamaguchi said he was less than two miles away from ground zero that day. His eardrums were ruptured, and his upper torso was burned by the blast, which destroyed most of the city’s buildings and killed 80,000 people.

Mr. Yamaguchi spent the night in a Hiroshima bomb shelter and returned to Nagasaki, his hometown, the following day, according to interviews he gave over the years. The second bomb, known as Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, killing 70,000 people.

Mr. Yamaguchi was in his Nagasaki office, telling his boss about the Hiroshima blast, when “suddenly the same white light filled the room,” he said in an interview last March with the British newspaper The Independent.

“I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima,” he said.

Japan surrendered six days after the Nagasaki attack.

Mr. Yamaguchi recovered from his wounds, went to work for the American occupation forces, became a teacher and eventually returned to work at Mitsubishi.

There were believed to have been about 165 twice-bombed people, known as nijyuu hibakusha, although municipal officials in both cities have said that Mr. Yamaguchi was the only person to be officially acknowledged as such.

One of his daughters, Toshiko Yamasaki, who was born in 1948, said her mother had also been “soaked in black rain and was poisoned” by the fallout from the Nagasaki blast. Her mother died in 2008 from kidney and liver cancer. She was 88.

“We think she passed the poison on to us,” Ms. Yamasaki said, noting that her brother died of cancer at 59 and that her sister has been chronically ill throughout her life.

In his later years Mr. Yamaguchi spoke out against atomic weapons, though he had earlier avoided joining antinuclear protests because of the attention he might have attracted, Ms. Yamasaki told The Independent. “He was so healthy, he thought it would have been unfair to people who were really sick,” she added.

Mr. Yamaguchi rarely gave interviews, but he wrote a memoir and was part of a 2006 documentary about the double bombing survivors. He called for the abolition of nuclear weapons at a showing of the documentary, “Niju Hibaku” (“Twice Bombed”), at the United Nations that year.

At a lecture he gave in Nagasaki last June, Mr. Yamaguchi said he had written to President Obama about banning nuclear arms. And he was recently visited by the American film director James Cameron to discuss a film project on atomic bombs, Ms. Yamasaki said.

Mr. Yamaguchi was philosophical about his surviving the blasts. “I could have died on either of those days,” he told The Mainichi Daily News of Japan in August. “Everything that follows is a bonus.”

The First Step Is Admitting You Have A Problem
From the Heritage Foundation's "Morning Bell"
Posted January 8th, 2010 at 9.50am in Protect America.

It may have taken President Barack Obama two weeks to deliver a speech on the failed Flight 253 bomb attack without blaming President Bush, but he should still be commended for finally owning up for the massive intelligence failure. President Obama told the American people yesterday: “The U.S. government had the information . . . to potentially uncover this plot and disrupt the attack. Rather than a failure to collect or share intelligence, this was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already had. … Ultimately, the buck stops with me . . . and when the system fails, it is my responsibility.”

But while the President is right to admit the system failed and that it is his fault that it did, he is still clueless about why. The President promised he would direct “our intelligence community immediately begin assigning specific responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats so that these leads are pursued and acted upon aggressively — not just most of the time, but all of the time.” And he added: “In addition to the corrective efforts that I’ve ordered, I’ve directed agency heads to establish internal accountability reviews, and directed my national security staff to monitor their efforts.”

But this failure of our intelligence system was not just about lack of accountability. It was about empowerment - or more specifically the lack thereof. The system simply moved too slowly because there was a lack of urgency about the war on terror. Intelligence personnel were not empowered to employ their ingenuity and resourcefulness to connect the dots. Adding layers of “internal accountability reviews” will only make the bureaucratic stupor worse. It is people’s resourcefulness and initiative that will stop the next terrorist attack, not a bureaucratic process.

And from the day he stepped into office, President Obama’s actions have done nothing but kill the initiative and morale of our intelligence employees. From day one, he made it clear that he believes the war on terror is a civilian criminal justice problem to be managed, and not a war to be won. That is why he took the responsibility for interrogating detainees from the CIA and gave it to the FBI. That is why he has failed to seek the renewal of key investigatory authorities authorized under the USA Patriot Act, instead settling for a six-month extension tacked on to the Defense appropriations bill. It is why instead of promising victory in Afghanistan, he sent fewer troops than were required and gave al Qaeda a set date for our withdrawal. It is why he has failed to approach Congress with legislation establishing a legal framework for handling terrorism detainees. It is why he is pushing for Khalid Sheik Mohammed to be prosecuted in civilian court despite his previous guilty plea in a military tribunal. And most demoralizing of all, President Obama has allowed Attorney General Eric Holder to re-investigate nearly a dozen CIA interrogators and contractors for their past efforts in the war on terror.

This is an issue of leadership. The President of the United States sets the tone and then the message filters down. Our intelligence personnel failed to follow-up on the leads that could have prevented Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from even boarding the plane because their leader had sent the message that fighting the war on terror was not a high priority. Finally, it now seems that the President is ready to start acting like protecting the American people is not just a duty: it is his first duty.

Oops, Wrong Door

These guys want to rule the world and think they can change the weather -- but they can't find their way to the conference room and walk into a supply closet instead.

"Has there ever been a more pitiful example of misguided nonsense, aggressive idiocy and functional stupidity than last week's climate change conference in Copenhagen?" Dec. 21, 2009 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal EDITORIAL: Climate folly Copenhagen conference a sham Has there ever been a more pitiful example of misguided nonsense, aggressive idiocy and functional stupidity than last week's climate change conference in Copenhagen? The weeklong orgy of excess -- to which most participants arrived in plush, carbon-emitting private jets and were shuttled around in limos -- was nothing more than another leftist shakedown of wealthy nations on behalf of "developing" countries. This time in the name of saving the planet. Promoting panic in the name of global warming is the Trojan horse for those who seek to overhaul the world economy by subverting capitalism and advancing collectivism. There is absolutely no evidence that mandating strict carbon emission standards will do anything at all to solve the perceived problem. Instead, we were treated to another U.N. gathering at which Third World hacks such as Hugo Chavez are applauded while Western ideals are dismissed and derided. Unless, of course, those Western nations agree to cough up cash to dictatorial kleptocrats. The most significant part of the bogus and nonbinding "deal" brokered by President Barack Obama, for instance, is a $30 billion, three-year program intended to help poor countries address environmental degradation and develop alternative energy. That figure is supposed to rise to $100 billion a year by 2020. Suffice it to say that none of that money will go toward providing the citizens of "poor" countries with the means to become freer and more prosperous -- and thus more likely to be good environmental stewards. Instead of offering more and more handouts, President Obama should have stood tall and explained that wealthy nations are wealthy for a reason: They stand atop political and cultural institutions that respect private property, contract law, individual liberty and capitalism. Instead of sending cash to Chad, Laos, Guyana and Niger under the guise of mitigating global warming, we should send the works of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, John Locke and the founding fathers. Then toss in tomes by Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand. "Want to know the best way to heal the planet?" asked sydicated columnist Jonah Goldberg. "Create more rich countries. Want to know the best way to hurt the planet? Throw a wet blanket on economic growth." Guess which option most of the Copenhagen "activists" prefer.

September 23, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
The Dog Ate Global Warming
Interpreting climate data can be hard enough. What if some key data have been fiddled?
By Patrick J. Michaels

Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.

Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense.

In the early 1980s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia established the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to produce the world’s first comprehensive history of surface temperature. It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley” record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It was this record that prompted the IPCC to claim a “discernible human influence on global climate.”

Putting together such a record isn’t at all easy. Weather stations weren’t really designed to monitor global climate. Long-standing ones were usually established at points of commerce, which tend to grow into cities that induce spurious warming trends in their records. Trees grow up around thermometers and lower the afternoon temperature. Further, as documented by the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Sr., many of the stations themselves are placed in locations, such as in parking lots or near heat vents, where artificially high temperatures are bound to be recorded.

So the weather data that go into the historical climate records that are required to verify models of global warming aren’t the original records at all. Jones and Wigley, however, weren’t specific about what was done to which station in order to produce their record, which, according to the IPCC, showed a warming of 0.6° +/– 0.2°C in the 20th century.

Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to “try and find something wrong.” The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.

Then the story changed. In June 2009, Georgia Tech’s Peter Webster told Canadian researcher Stephen McIntyre that he had requested raw data, and Jones freely gave it to him. So McIntyre promptly filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the same data. Despite having been invited by the National Academy of Sciences to present his analyses of millennial temperatures, McIntyre was told that he couldn’t have the data because he wasn’t an “academic.” So his colleague Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, asked for the data. He was turned down, too.

Faced with a growing number of such requests, Jones refused them all, saying that there were “confidentiality” agreements regarding the data between CRU and nations that supplied the data. McIntyre’s blog readers then requested those agreements, country by country, but only a handful turned out to exist, mainly from Third World countries and written in very vague language.

It’s worth noting that McKitrick and I had published papers demonstrating that the quality of land-based records is so poor that the warming trend estimated since 1979 (the first year for which we could compare those records to independent data from satellites) may have been overestimated by 50 percent. Webster, who received the CRU data, published studies linking changes in hurricane patterns to warming (while others have found otherwise).

Enter the dog that ate global warming.

Roger Pielke Jr., an esteemed professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, then requested the raw data from Jones. Jones responded:

Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.

The statement about “data storage” is balderdash. They got the records from somewhere. The files went onto a computer. All of the original data could easily fit on the 9-inch tape drives common in the mid-1980s. I had all of the world’s surface barometric pressure data on one such tape in 1979.

If we are to believe Jones’s note to the younger Pielke, CRU adjusted the original data and then lost or destroyed them over twenty years ago. The letter to Warwick Hughes may have been an outright lie. After all, Peter Webster received some of the data this year. So the question remains: What was destroyed or lost, when was it destroyed or lost, and why?

All of this is much more than an academic spat. It now appears likely that the U.S. Senate will drop cap-and-trade climate legislation from its docket this fall — whereupon the Obama Environmental Protection Agency is going to step in and issue regulations on carbon-dioxide emissions. Unlike a law, which can’t be challenged on a scientific basis, a regulation can. If there are no data, there’s no science. U.S. taxpayers deserve to know the answer to the question posed above.

— Patrick J. Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know.

"The pseudo-science of global warming is a global laughing stock and Copenhagen is a farce."

Copenhagen climate summit: 'most important paper in the world' is a glorified UN press release

By Gerald Warner World Last updated: December 18th, 2009

When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?

No contest: stop issuing three rainforests of press releases every day, change the heading to James Bond-style “Do not distribute” and “leak” a single copy, in the knowledge that human nature is programmed to interest itself in anything it imagines it is not supposed to see, whereas it would bin the same document unread if it were distributed openly.

After that, get some unbiased, neutral observer, such as the executive director of Greenpeace, to say: “This is the single most important piece of paper in the world today.” Unfortunately, the response of all intelligent people will be to fall about laughing; but it was worth a try – everybody loves a tryer – and the climate alarmists are no longer in a position to pick and choose their tactics.

But boy! Was this crass, or what? The apocalyptic document revealing that even if the Western leaders hand over all the climate Danegeld demanded of them, appropriately at the venue of Copenhagen, the earth will still fry on a 3C temperature rise is the latest transparent scare tactic to extort more cash from taxpayers. The danger of this ploy, of course, is that people might say “If we are going to be chargrilled anyway, what is the point of handing over billions – better to get some serious conspicuous consumption in before the ski slopes turn into saunas.”

This “single most important piece of paper in the world” comes, presumably, from an authoritative and totally neutral source? Yes, of course. It’s from the – er – UN Framework Committee on Climate Change that is – er – running the Danegeld Summit. Some people might be small-minded enough to suggest this paper has as much authority as a “leaked” document from Number 10 revealing that life would be hell under the Tories.

This week has been truly historic. It has marked the beginning of the landslide that is collapsing the whole AGW imposture. The pseudo-science of global warming is a global laughing stock and Copenhagen is a farce. In the warmist camp the Main Man is a railway engineer with huge investments in the carbon industry. That says it all. The world’s boiler being heroically damped down by the Fat Controller. Al Gore, occupant of the only private house that can be seen from space, so huge is its energy consumption, wanted to charge punters $1,200 to be photographed with him at Copenhagen. There is a man who is really worried about the planet’s future.

If there were not $45trillion of Western citizens’ money at stake, this would be the funniest moment in world history. What a bunch of buffoons. Not since Neville Chamberlain tugged a Claridge’s luncheon bill from his pocket and flourished it on the steps of the aircraft that brought him back from Munich has a worthless scrap of paper been so audaciously hyped. There was one good moment at Copenhagen, though: some seriously professional truncheon work by Danish Plod on the smellies. Otherwise, this event is strictly for Hans Christian Andersen

Amid rumbling discontent, Democrats head for the exits | Washington Examiner

Amid rumbling discontent, Democrats head for the exits | Washington Examiner

Swine Flu Warning

One of my co-workers came down with swine flu and the management sent out a warning to the rest of us.

Swine Flu Advisory
If you wake up and don't feel quite like your old self ...




















... don't come to work!

PERSECUTION TODAY: NOT AN ABSTRACT IDEA

from catholicculture.org
Posted Aug. 17, 2009 3:53 PM || by Phil Lawler || category Inside Out


From Mumbai, India, reader Alex Kannattumadom writes:

We acknowledge and appreciate the efforts you put up for a good cause. It is high time you look beyond your own territories to see, especially, the Church in India. She is going through a very precarious situation. You see the media headlines: Church burnt in Karnataka state, Bible burnt in Gujarat, Priests murdered in broad daylight in Arunachal, Nuns raped in Uttar Pradesh. The Clergy and the laity had to flee to thick forests and had to stay there for weeks in Orissa. The Holy Host is desecrated in public.

Still we keep the lamp lit, unflickering, on a high lamppost. We In India deserve a moral boost and assistance from you.

Over the years we have carried literally hundreds of stories about the sufferings of Christians in India-- as well as the trials that our Christians brethren face in other countries. (See today's Feature about the latest fervent pleas by Vietnamese Catholics for an end to government oppression.) But I'm sorry to say that these stories attract fewer readers than most other CWN headlines. That's a shame-- literally-- because Alex Kannattumadom is right. Wherever Christians are suffering for the faith, they deserve our support.

Maybe there isn't much that we can do to help our fellow Catholics living thousands of miles away, apart from praying for them. But prayer is the most important step that we could take to preserve their hope and their courage. And the knowledge that we are praying for them should bolster their morale.

Beyond that, if we are informed about the struggles that the Church faces in other countries, we can do our part to persuade government leaders that they should exert diplomatic pressure on the offending countries to ease the oppression. Persecutors always prefer to do their dirty work without attracting notice. If we can expose their offenses, we are on the way to correcting them.

Would you please join me in saying a prayer-- right now-- for suffering Christians in India, Vietnam, and other countries where religious freedom is not protected? Would you please make a commitment to keep informed about the trials of Catholics in these lands, so that you can be involved in the political efforts to help them?

Meet the New Disney Character: Odumbo!

Under ObamaCare, You'll Get Waiting Lines, Lower Quality and Less Innovation -- Usually All Three

Great editorial in today's Wall Street Journal

Obama's Senior Moment

Why the elderly are right to worry when the government rations medical care.

Elderly Americans are turning out in droves to fight ObamaCare, and President Obama is arguing back that they have nothing to worry about. Allow us to referee. While claims about euthanasia and "death panels" are over the top, senior fears have exposed a fundamental truth about what Mr. Obama is proposing: Namely, once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, rationing care is inevitable, and those who have lived the longest will find their care the most restricted.

Far from being a scare tactic, this is a logical conclusion based on experience and common-sense. Once health care is a "free good" that government pays for, demand will soar and government costs will soar too. When the public finally reaches its taxing limit, something will have to give on the care and spending side. In a word, care will be rationed by politics.

Mr. Obama's reply is that private insurance companies already ration, by deciding which treatments are covered and which aren't. However, there's an ocean of difference between coverage decisions made under millions of voluntary private contracts and rationing via government. An Atlantic Ocean, in fact. Virtually every European government with "universal" health care restricts access in one way or another to control costs, and it isn't pretty.

The British system is most restrictive, using a black-box actuarial formula known as "quality-adjusted life years," or QALYs, that determines who can receive what care. If a treatment isn't deemed to be cost-effective for specific populations, particularly the elderly, the National Health Service simply doesn't pay for it. Even France—which has a mix of public and private medicine—has fixed reimbursement rates since the 1970s and strictly controls the use of specialists and the introduction of new medical technologies such as CT scans and MRIs.

Yes, the U.S. "rations" by ability to pay (though in the end no one is denied actual care). This is true of every good or service in a free economy and a world of finite resources but infinite wants. Yet no one would say we "ration" houses or gasoline because those goods are allocated by prices. The problem is that governments ration through brute force—either explicitly restricting the use of medicine or lowering payments below market rates. Both methods lead to waiting lines, lower quality, or less innovation—and usually all three.

A lot of talk has centered on what Sarah Palin inelegantly called "death panels." Of course rationing to save the federal fisc will be subtler than a bureaucratic decision to "pull the plug on grandma," as Mr. Obama put it. But Mrs. Palin has also exposed a basic truth. A substantial portion of Medicare spending is incurred in the last six months of life.

From the point of view of politicians with a limited budget, is it worth spending a lot on, say, a patient with late-stage cancer where the odds of remission are long? Or should they spend to improve quality, not length, of life? Or pay for a hip or knee replacement for seniors, when palliative care might cost less? And who decides?

In Britain, the NHS decides, and under its QALYs metric it generally won't pay more than $22,000 for treatments to extend a life six months. "Money for the NHS isn't limitless," as one NHS official recently put it in response to American criticism, "so we need to make sure the money we have goes on things which offer more than the care we'll have to forgo to pay for them."

Before he got defensive, Mr. Obama was open about this political calculation. He often invokes the experience of his own grandmother, musing whether it was wise for her to receive a hip replacement after a terminal cancer diagnosis. In an April interview with the New York Times, he wondered whether this represented a "sustainable model" for society. He seems to believe these medical issues are all justifiably political questions that government or some panel of philosopher kings can and should decide. No wonder so many seniors rebel at such judgments that they know they could do little to influence, much less change.

Mr. Obama has also said many times that the growth of Medicare spending must be restrained, and his budget director Peter Orszag has made it nearly his life's cause. We agree, but then why does Mr. Obama want to add to our fiscal burdens a new Medicare-like program for everyone under 65 too? Medicare already rations care, refusing, for example, to pay for virtual colonoscopies and has payment policies or directives to curtail the use of certain cancer drugs, diagnostic tools, asthma medications and many others. Seniors routinely buy supplemental insurance (Medigap) to patch Medicare's holes—and Medicare is still growing by 11% this year.

The political and fiscal pressure to further ration Medicare would increase exponentially if government is paying for most everyone's care. The better way to slow the growth of Medicare is to give seniors more control over their own health care and the incentives to spend wisely, by offering competitive insurance plans. But this would mean less control for government, not more.

It's striking that even the AARP—which is run by liberals who favor national health care—has been backing away from support for Mr. Obama's version. The AARP leadership's Democratic sympathies will probably prevail in the end, perhaps after some price-control sweeteners are added for prescription drugs. But AARP is out of touch with its own members, who have figured out that their own health and lives are at stake in this debate over ObamaCare. They know that when medical discretion clashes with limited government budgets, medicine loses.

Michael Ramirez Depicts Obama's

Socialized Health Care Plan

The Great Irony Of Health Reform: Middle Class, Not Rich, Get Shaft

By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON | Investor’s Business Daily | Posted Monday, August 03, 2009 4:20 PM PT

That's the great irony of President Obama's ambitious health care agenda: His administration, which seems to feel little empathy for the rich, is paving the way to a two-tiered system in which only the very rich would have a choice.

Under ObamaCare, the rich would continue to get the care they want — whether here or abroad — by paying for it out of their own pockets. The rest of us would stand in line and wait for rationed care.

Most Americans want consumer freedom. They want to be able to shop for health care value — for the best care, at the best prices. They'd like to have a lot more freedom to shop for such value than they currently have.

That's why Democrats are couching their proposed expansion of government-run health care in the language of competition and choice.

Listen to the president as he pitches the centerpiece of that agenda — a "public option," a form of Medicare for all. He says it's merely a way to give Americans another choice: People can buy private health insurance, just like now, or they can instead choose the government option.

But millions of middle-class Americans who are currently happy with their employer-provided insurance would soon find that the choice isn't theirs to make.

The government would make it cheaper for employers to contribute to the government-run option than to continue providing private insurance. Millions of employers would do the math and pick the government option. The "public option" would indeed provide a choice — for millions of employers, against the wishes of millions of employees.

The Lewin Group, a prominent consulting firm, estimates that a widespread "public option" with Medicare-like reimbursement rates would result in 118 million Americans losing their private insurance and being forced into government-run care.

Meanwhile, private insurance wouldn't be able to compete on the uneven playing field that Congress would establish. In its competition with FedEx and UPS, the Post Office at least has to provide an actual service.

But the "public option" would merely use government's coercive powers to dictate the prices and availability of services provided by others — by doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc. Private insurance cannot similarly fix prices and would be run out of business.

Lower reimbursement rates, coupled with a dwindling pool of private insurers to whom to pass on costs, would mean lower incomes for medical professionals. The eventual result would be fewer people entering the medical profession. If you question this, do you think higher salaries attract teachers?

A two-tiered system would then emerge: The very rich would take their spots like first-class passengers on the Titanic, paying for fine care and not asking the price. The rest of us would take our spots in steerage class, awaiting the inevitable collision between government-run health care and the iceberg of budgetary disaster.

White House budget director Peter Orszag recently opined that "the deficit impact of every other fiscal policy variable" is "swamped" by the deficit threat posed by Medicare and Medicaid. President Obama's solution? A massive new Medicare-like program!

Medicare may not pay much to doctors, but taxpayers pay plenty to Medicare. As my recent Pacific Research Institute study shows, since 1970, Medicare's costs have risen 34% more, per patient, than the combined costs of all health care in America apart from Medicare and Medicaid.

Medicare's costs have risen $2,511 more per patient. Across nearly four decades, government-run health care has been far more expensive than privately run care.

It comes down to a simple comparison and an obvious verdict: Privately run care offers choice and is cheaper. Government-run care denies choice and is more expensive.

But the particular losers under Obama-Care would be the middle class. The uninsured poor would largely benefit, although they might benefit even more — while hurting others far less — from fixing the unfairness in the tax code and giving them the health care tax break that millions of insured Americans already enjoy.

The truly rich would be largely unaffected, as they never really needed private insurance anyway. They would continue to pay for the care they want, because they can.

Middle-class Americans wouldn't enjoy that freedom. They would lose their employer-provided insurance and be left with only the government-run "option." And, under a government monopoly, they would get rationed care.

And every April 15, they would get a higher tax bill for their troubles, which just might make them feel sick enough to get back in line.

Anderson is a senior fellow in health care studies at the Pacific Research Institute and was the senior speechwriter for Secretary Mike Leavitt at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

THE ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE OBAMACARE

Written by Dr. Dave Janda

Thursday, 23 July 2009

As a physician who has authored books on preventative health care, I was given the opportunity to be the keynote speaker at a Congressional Dinner at The Capitol Building in Washington last Friday (7/17). The presentation was entitled Health Care Reform, The Power & Profit of Prevention, and I was gratified that it was well received. In preparation for the presentation, I read the latest version of "reform" as authored by The Obama Administration and supported by Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid. Here is the link to the 1,018 page document: http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf Let me summarize just a few salient points of the above plan. First, however, it should be clear that the same warning notice must be placed on The ObamaCare Plan as on a pack of cigarettes: Consuming this product will be hazardous to your health. The underlying method of cutting costs throughout the plan is based on rationing and denying care. There is no focus on preventing health care need whatever. The plan's method is the most inhumane and unethical approach to cutting costs I can imagine as a physician. The rationing of care is implemented through The National Health Care Board, according to the plan. This illustrious Board "will approve or reject treatment for patients based on the cost per treatment divided by the number of years the patient will benefit from the treatment." Translation.....if you are over 65 or have been recently diagnosed as having an advanced form of cardiac disease or aggressive cancer.....dream on if you think you will get treated.....pick out your coffin. Oh, you say this could never happen? Sorry.... this is the same model they use in Britain. The plan mandates that there will be little or no advanced treatments to be available in the future. It creates The Federal Coordinating Council For Comparative Effectiveness Research, the purpose of which is "to slow the development of new medications and technologies in order to reduce costs." Yes, this is to be the law. The plan also outlines that doctors and hospitals will be overseen and reviewed by The National Coordinator For Health Information and Technology. This " coordinator" will "monitor treatments being delivered to make sure doctors and hospitals are strictly following government guidelines that are deemed appropriate." It goes on to say....."Doctors and hospitals not adhering to guidelines will face penalties." According to those in Congress, penalties could include large six figure financial fines and possible imprisonment. So according to The ObamaCare Plan....if your doctor saves your life you might have to go to the prison to see your doctor for follow -up appointments. I believe this is the same model Stalin used in the former Soviet Union. Section 102 has the Orwellian title, "Protecting the Choice to Keep Current Coverage." What this section really mandates is that it is illegal to keep your private insurance if your status changes - e.g., if you lose or change your job, retire from your job and become a senior, graduate from college and get your first job. Yes, illegal. When Mr. Obama hosted a conference call with bloggers urging them to pressure Congress to pass his health plan as soon as possible, a blogger from Maine referenced an Investors Business Daily article that claimed Section 102 of the House health legislation would outlaw private insurance. He asked: "Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?" Mr. Obama replied: "You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about." Then there is Section 1233 of The ObamaCare Plan, devoted to "Advanced Care Planning." After each American turns 65 years of age they have to go to a mandated counseling program that is designed to end life sooner. This session is to occur every 5 years unless the person has developed a chronic illness then it must be done every year. The topics in this session will include, "how to decline hydration, nutrition and how to initiate hospice care." It is no wonder The Obama Administration does not like my emphasis on Prevention. For Mr. Obama, prevention is the "enemy" as people would live longer. I rest my case. The ObamaCare Plan is hazardous to the health of every American. After I finished my Capitol Hill presentation, I was asked by a Congressman in the question-answer session: "I'll be doing a number of network interviews on the Obama Health Care Plan. If I am asked what is the one word to describe the plan what should I answer." The answer is simple, honest, direct, analytical, sad but truthful. I told him that one word is FASCIST. Then I added, "I hope you'll have the courage to use that word, Congressman. No other word is more appropriate." Dr. Dave Janda, MD, is an orthopedic surgeon, and a world-recognized expert on the prevention of sports injuries, particularly in children. His website is noinjury.com.

How's That 'Hope' and 'Change' Working Out For You?

"I feel like I've been punked"

The annoited one hasn't even been president for a year, but for some those heady days of Camelot have come to an end. Saw this intersting piece from the Washington Post via Commentary's Contentions blog:

Re: The Obama Effect

Posted By Jennifer Rubin On August 5, 2009 @ 9:41 AM In Contentions | Comments Disabled

Yesterday I wondered whether Obama was weighing down the Democrats in this year’s two gubernatorial races. A Washington Post reporter, in a story titled “Some Obama Voters Start to Express Regret,” expresses similar thoughts on the Virginia race:

The president will make his first appearance in the campaign Thursday, when he headlines a fundraiser for R. Creigh Deeds (D) in McLean, in part to try to help the state senator from Bath County win over wavering Democrats such as Cleland.

But Obama’s entry into the race presents a challenge for Deeds: How does he continue the momentum created by Obama, the first Democratic presidential candidate in more than four decades to carry Virginia, without being saddled with the baggage the president now carries?

His answer has largely been to distance himself from the president’s policies despite attempts by Republican Robert F. McDonnell to force him to take positions on issues such as unions, climate change and health care.

But at least so far that tactic hasn’t been working. The voters interviewed by the Post are already fed up with Obama and want to give the Republicans another shot. Yes, Obama is in D.C., and the race at hand is for the governor’s mansion in Richmond, but right now the ballot in November is the only way Virginians can register their views. This from an Obama voter:

“He’s just not as advertised,” she said. “Nothing’s changed for the common guy. I feel like I’ve been punked.” . . . She’s seen enough of Obama’s leadership to know that she is open to voting for a Republican this fall. “We really needed something different,” she said, “but instead we are doing the same things over and over and over.”

Again, we are a long way from November, but Deeds will need to change the dynamic in the race. Otherwise, he will be another victim of the Virginia curse – the unbroken string of candidates dating back to 1977 who lost the gubernatorial race after their party took the White House the preceding year.

URL to article: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/75352