www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.schip14oct14,0,5817986.story
baltimoresun.com
Truth about Bush's SCHIP veto doesn't match harsh rhetoric
By Grace-Marie Turner
October 14, 2007
Is President Bush a liar who hates children? That's what many of his critics now are asking. Why else, they say, would he refuse to sign a bill providing health insurance to poor kids?
Specifically, the president has vetoed a bill expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which was designed to provide health coverage to lower-income children. One nationally syndicated columnist went so far as to call Mr. Bush's rationale in vetoing the bill a "pack of flat-out lies."
This kind of rhetoric is wrong and misleads people about the facts of this important issue.
There is no debate over whether to reauthorize SCHIP so it can continue to provide insurance to needy children. The debate is about whether children in middle-income families should be added.
The president is absolutely right in insisting that SCHIP focus on its core mission of needy children. When SCHIP was created in 1997, the target population was children whose parents earned too much for them to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance. The president wants the program to focus on children whose families earn less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level. In today's dollars, that's $41,300 a year.
About two-thirds of the nation's uninsured children already are eligible for either Medicaid or SCHIP but aren't enrolled. Raising the income threshold won't solve this core problem. Congress should require states to focus on the 689,000 children who the Urban Institute says are uninsured and would be eligible for SCHIP if eligibility were limited to the $41,300 income level.
The other big problem is that many states are using SCHIP dollars to insure adults. Fourteen states cover adults through SCHIP, and at least six of them are spending more of their SCHIP dollars on adults than on children.
With this in mind, the Bush administration issued a ruling in August requiring states to demonstrate that they had enrolled 95 percent of eligible needy children before expanding the program.
Yet the bill that Congress passed, and which the president vetoed, nullifies that ruling and effectively refuses to agree that needy kids should get first preference. Instead, the congressional measure would give $60 billion to the states over five years to enroll millions more "children" - although many of them would be adults. Others would be from higher-income families.
New York, for instance, could submit a plan that would add children in families earning up to $83,000 a year to SCHIP. New Jersey could continue to cover kids whose parents make up to $72,000. All the other states would be allowed to cover kids in families with incomes up to $61,000.
Most children in these higher-income families, unsurprisingly, are already covered by private insurance. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 77 percent of children in families earning more than twice the poverty line have private health insurance now.
No one doubts that SCHIP is a vitally important program for needy children, and that our nation needs to do a better job of helping working families afford health insurance. But giving the states incentives to add middle-income kids to their SCHIP rolls would prompt families to replace private insurance with taxpayer-provided coverage.
The goal of SCHIP should be to provide private coverage to uninsured children. If Congress would send the president a bill that does that, he says he would sign it in a minute.
Grace-Marie Turner is the founder and president of the Galen Institute, a free-market-oriented health policy research organization. Her e-mail is gracemarie@galen.org.
Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
What has Al Gore done for world peace?
This article questions the credibility of Al Gore earning the Nobel Peace Prize. I however question the relevance of the Nobel Peace Prize itself.
What has Al Gore done for world peace?
Damian Thompson
So Al Gore is the joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Admittedly, he has to share it with the United Nations’ climate change panel - but, even so, I think we need to declare an international smugness alert.
The former US Vice-President has already taken over from Michael Moore as the most sanctimonious lardbutt Yank on the planet. Can you imagine what he'll be like now that the Norwegian Nobel committee has given him the prize?
More to the point, can you imagine how enormous his already massive carbon footprint will become once he starts jetting around the world bragging about his new title?
Just after Gore won an Oscar for his global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth - in which he asked American households to cut their use of electricity - the Tennessee Centre for Policy Research took a look at Al's energy bills.
It reckoned that his 20-room, eight-bathroom mansion in Nashville sometimes uses twice the energy in one month that the average American household gets through in a year. The combined energy and gas bills for his estate came to nearly $30,000 in 2006. Ah, say his defenders, but he uses rainwater to flush his lavatories. Is there enough rainwater in the world, I wonder?
There are so many reasons why Gore shouldn't have won the peace prize for his preachiness. Alas, it is too late to influence their decision, but I'd have liked to refer the judges to a ruling by Mr Justice Burton, a High Court judge who has criticised the Government for sending out An Inconvenient Truth to schools without a health warning. The reason? It's full of errors and unsubstantiated claims.
The judge is not saying that Gore's basic thesis is wrong (and nor am I). In a way, his findings are more damning than that.
Gore claims that the rises in carbon dioxide and temperature over 650,000 years show an "exact fit". That's wrong, says Mr Justice Burton: there is a connection, but not a precise correlation.
Gore predicts sea levels rising by up to 20ft in the near future. Not so, according to the judge: that will happen only after millions of years.
Those low-lying Pacific atolls that Gore claims have been evacuated? No evidence. Polar bears who drowned swimming to look for ice? Again, no evidence: four bears have drowned - but because of a storm.
None of which will surprise seasoned Gore-watchers. The man is not, as his enemies maintained when he ran against George W. Bush in 2000, a pants-on-fire liar. He's an exaggerator and a braggart.
He never claimed to have invented the internet; he said he "took the initiative in creating the internet", which is about a quarter true - he was among the first congressmen to support the invention.
In 1999, he boasted about having uncovered the most famous toxic waste site in America ("I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal"). Yes, but Love Canal was already notorious by the time Gore "found" it.
That's typical of his arrogance, says the non-partisan US politics website Skeleton Closet: "When he says the words 'little place', you can feel him struggling to contain his pleasure with his good deeds."
Gore struggles with his memory, too. "I certainly learnt a lot from 3,000 town hall meetings across …Tennessee over a 16-year period," he told National Public Radio. And so he would have, had he actually attended 187 town hall meetings a year, which is what it works out as: he might even have managed to hold his home state in 2000.
But my favourite Gore memory lapse is his account of being sung to sleep with the lullaby Look for the Union Label, written in 1975. How sweet: being sung to sleep by your parents at the age of 27.
Then there's his evasiveness on the subject of alleged ethical violations. He resorts to "legalisms", says Skeleton Closet: although he might technically be in the right, "he has such a tin ear for the way normal people talk that he sounds like a mafia don".
But there is a more fundamental objection to awarding Gore the peace prize that goes beyond issues of character. Climate change is a threat to the environment, not to "peace" and international order. The prize has gone to some sleazy recipients in the past, but at least you can make a case that their actions staved off bloodshed.
Lumping together global warming and terrorism, as David Cameron did in his conference speech, is a rhetorical sleight of hand typical of opportunistic politicians who are trying to hoover up liberal and conservative votes at the same time. I don't think that description applies to the Tory leader, but it sure as hell fits Albert Gore, Jr.
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see
What has Al Gore done for world peace?
Damian Thompson
So Al Gore is the joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Admittedly, he has to share it with the United Nations’ climate change panel - but, even so, I think we need to declare an international smugness alert.
The former US Vice-President has already taken over from Michael Moore as the most sanctimonious lardbutt Yank on the planet. Can you imagine what he'll be like now that the Norwegian Nobel committee has given him the prize?
More to the point, can you imagine how enormous his already massive carbon footprint will become once he starts jetting around the world bragging about his new title?
Just after Gore won an Oscar for his global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth - in which he asked American households to cut their use of electricity - the Tennessee Centre for Policy Research took a look at Al's energy bills.
It reckoned that his 20-room, eight-bathroom mansion in Nashville sometimes uses twice the energy in one month that the average American household gets through in a year. The combined energy and gas bills for his estate came to nearly $30,000 in 2006. Ah, say his defenders, but he uses rainwater to flush his lavatories. Is there enough rainwater in the world, I wonder?
There are so many reasons why Gore shouldn't have won the peace prize for his preachiness. Alas, it is too late to influence their decision, but I'd have liked to refer the judges to a ruling by Mr Justice Burton, a High Court judge who has criticised the Government for sending out An Inconvenient Truth to schools without a health warning. The reason? It's full of errors and unsubstantiated claims.
The judge is not saying that Gore's basic thesis is wrong (and nor am I). In a way, his findings are more damning than that.
Gore claims that the rises in carbon dioxide and temperature over 650,000 years show an "exact fit". That's wrong, says Mr Justice Burton: there is a connection, but not a precise correlation.
Gore predicts sea levels rising by up to 20ft in the near future. Not so, according to the judge: that will happen only after millions of years.
Those low-lying Pacific atolls that Gore claims have been evacuated? No evidence. Polar bears who drowned swimming to look for ice? Again, no evidence: four bears have drowned - but because of a storm.
None of which will surprise seasoned Gore-watchers. The man is not, as his enemies maintained when he ran against George W. Bush in 2000, a pants-on-fire liar. He's an exaggerator and a braggart.
He never claimed to have invented the internet; he said he "took the initiative in creating the internet", which is about a quarter true - he was among the first congressmen to support the invention.
In 1999, he boasted about having uncovered the most famous toxic waste site in America ("I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal"). Yes, but Love Canal was already notorious by the time Gore "found" it.
That's typical of his arrogance, says the non-partisan US politics website Skeleton Closet: "When he says the words 'little place', you can feel him struggling to contain his pleasure with his good deeds."
Gore struggles with his memory, too. "I certainly learnt a lot from 3,000 town hall meetings across …Tennessee over a 16-year period," he told National Public Radio. And so he would have, had he actually attended 187 town hall meetings a year, which is what it works out as: he might even have managed to hold his home state in 2000.
But my favourite Gore memory lapse is his account of being sung to sleep with the lullaby Look for the Union Label, written in 1975. How sweet: being sung to sleep by your parents at the age of 27.
Then there's his evasiveness on the subject of alleged ethical violations. He resorts to "legalisms", says Skeleton Closet: although he might technically be in the right, "he has such a tin ear for the way normal people talk that he sounds like a mafia don".
But there is a more fundamental objection to awarding Gore the peace prize that goes beyond issues of character. Climate change is a threat to the environment, not to "peace" and international order. The prize has gone to some sleazy recipients in the past, but at least you can make a case that their actions staved off bloodshed.
Lumping together global warming and terrorism, as David Cameron did in his conference speech, is a rhetorical sleight of hand typical of opportunistic politicians who are trying to hoover up liberal and conservative votes at the same time. I don't think that description applies to the Tory leader, but it sure as hell fits Albert Gore, Jr.
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Che Guevara was a murderous thug!
Jay Ambrose: Che Guevara was a murderous thug
Jay Ambrose, The Examiner2007-10-10 07:00:00.0Current rank: # 3 of 4,783 WASHINGTON -
Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed 40 years ago this week, and the impulse to honor him is bursting out all over.
Celebrations are taking place in such places as Cuba, Bolivia and Ireland, a priest has called him a saint, and hosts of other people are likewise instructing us on what a hero he was, what a moral giant, what a fierce combatant for justice in an imperialist-threatened, inhumane world.
Not to interrupt the hallucinatory hosannas or anything, but it seems worth mentioning that there is another side to this story, the one that says Che was in fact a murderous, evil, obsessed thug who stands convicted of his vicious ideological fanaticism and cruelties by his own words as well as by his damnable deeds.
Perhaps the idolizers who wear the Che T-shirts are unaware of those words, as when he said that a true revolutionary had to hate so much that he would be pushed past ordinary human limits and become “an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine.”
Perhaps they don't know that, after the Soviets took their nuclear missiles out of Cuba in 1962, he told a reporter he had hoped to “use them against the very heart of America, including New York City,” very likely killing some of those who would later put on those T-shirts, and otherwise making this particular fad less likely.
Perhaps the people who make Che-adoring movies — Robert Redford did it — or write adulatory pieces about Fidel Castro's henchman are ignorant of how Che recklessly exterminated people who had been proven guilty of absolutely nothing, sometimes shooting them in the back of the neck himself.
Following the Castro takeover of Cuba in 1959, Che ran a Havana prison in which he killed, killed and then killed some more, and later helped start the labor camp system in which homosexuals and others considered undesirable were to be confined as nothing more than slaves.
None of this information is hard to come by. There are a number of easily accessible, well-researched, carefully documented, evidence-heavy articles reciting the truth, while telling us as well how Che’s economic guidance of Cuba's central bank was a disaster that further afflicted people who either learned to survive hunger-inducing totalitarianism or risk their lives fleeing the island.
Turn to these articles instead of to romantic fantasies, and you'll also learn how this Argentinean doctor left Cuba after an apparent falling out with Castro, fought in the Congo and then went to Bolivia to liberate peasants who were finding their lives improved without his aid and were intelligently wary of this crazed ideologue. That’s where he was caught and shot to death at the age of 39.
One writer speculates that a famous, endlessly reproduced photograph of a handsome, bold-looking Che is at least partly responsible for some coming to very nearly worship him as an unparalleled 20th-century fighter for societal righteousness.
Maybe so. Images can be powerful that way. But as the writer recognizes, it is hardly excusable for this or any other reason that anyone who has delved into the story of this cruel, Hitler-like, 20th century scourge to preach he was a good man with the right ideas.
What's at work in the idolizing is either a mild leftist ideology that decides to leave out or refuses to believe the condemnatory stuff, or a wild leftist ideology that says yes, what Che did was justified in trying to set the world right.
Either way, there are many perils, such as the destructive march of some Latin American countries — such as Hugo Chavez-led Venezuela — toward a destructive, liberty-denying socialist future.
Examiner Columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies. He may be reached at SpeaktoJay@aol.com
Jay Ambrose, The Examiner2007-10-10 07:00:00.0Current rank: # 3 of 4,783 WASHINGTON -
Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed 40 years ago this week, and the impulse to honor him is bursting out all over.
Celebrations are taking place in such places as Cuba, Bolivia and Ireland, a priest has called him a saint, and hosts of other people are likewise instructing us on what a hero he was, what a moral giant, what a fierce combatant for justice in an imperialist-threatened, inhumane world.
Not to interrupt the hallucinatory hosannas or anything, but it seems worth mentioning that there is another side to this story, the one that says Che was in fact a murderous, evil, obsessed thug who stands convicted of his vicious ideological fanaticism and cruelties by his own words as well as by his damnable deeds.
Perhaps the idolizers who wear the Che T-shirts are unaware of those words, as when he said that a true revolutionary had to hate so much that he would be pushed past ordinary human limits and become “an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine.”
Perhaps they don't know that, after the Soviets took their nuclear missiles out of Cuba in 1962, he told a reporter he had hoped to “use them against the very heart of America, including New York City,” very likely killing some of those who would later put on those T-shirts, and otherwise making this particular fad less likely.
Perhaps the people who make Che-adoring movies — Robert Redford did it — or write adulatory pieces about Fidel Castro's henchman are ignorant of how Che recklessly exterminated people who had been proven guilty of absolutely nothing, sometimes shooting them in the back of the neck himself.
Following the Castro takeover of Cuba in 1959, Che ran a Havana prison in which he killed, killed and then killed some more, and later helped start the labor camp system in which homosexuals and others considered undesirable were to be confined as nothing more than slaves.
None of this information is hard to come by. There are a number of easily accessible, well-researched, carefully documented, evidence-heavy articles reciting the truth, while telling us as well how Che’s economic guidance of Cuba's central bank was a disaster that further afflicted people who either learned to survive hunger-inducing totalitarianism or risk their lives fleeing the island.
Turn to these articles instead of to romantic fantasies, and you'll also learn how this Argentinean doctor left Cuba after an apparent falling out with Castro, fought in the Congo and then went to Bolivia to liberate peasants who were finding their lives improved without his aid and were intelligently wary of this crazed ideologue. That’s where he was caught and shot to death at the age of 39.
One writer speculates that a famous, endlessly reproduced photograph of a handsome, bold-looking Che is at least partly responsible for some coming to very nearly worship him as an unparalleled 20th-century fighter for societal righteousness.
Maybe so. Images can be powerful that way. But as the writer recognizes, it is hardly excusable for this or any other reason that anyone who has delved into the story of this cruel, Hitler-like, 20th century scourge to preach he was a good man with the right ideas.
What's at work in the idolizing is either a mild leftist ideology that decides to leave out or refuses to believe the condemnatory stuff, or a wild leftist ideology that says yes, what Che did was justified in trying to set the world right.
Either way, there are many perils, such as the destructive march of some Latin American countries — such as Hugo Chavez-led Venezuela — toward a destructive, liberty-denying socialist future.
Examiner Columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies. He may be reached at SpeaktoJay@aol.com
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Research?
While wondering how much tax payer dollars were used to perform this study, it occurred to me: How do you volunteer to be a researcher? I am sorry honey, I need to go out and do some... research. :-)
Study: Strippers Make More in Tips When Most 'Fertile'
Foxnews
A new study from the University of New Mexico found that, on average, strippers make the most money in tips during the most “fertile” days of their monthly cycles, Psychology Today reports.
Researchers also found that women who take the birth control pill make less in tips overall than women who do not take the pill, $37 an hour versus $53 an hour, respectively.
For their research, psychologist Geoffrey Miller and colleagues visited local gentlemen's clubs and counted tips made on lap dances.
Click here to read the Psychology Today study
Dancers made about $70 an hour during their peak period of fertility, versus about $35 while menstruating and $50 in between. Researchers attributed the fluctuation in tips to the changes in body odor, waist-to-hip ratio, and facial features that occur throughout a woman's cycle.
Study: Strippers Make More in Tips When Most 'Fertile'
Foxnews
A new study from the University of New Mexico found that, on average, strippers make the most money in tips during the most “fertile” days of their monthly cycles, Psychology Today reports.
Researchers also found that women who take the birth control pill make less in tips overall than women who do not take the pill, $37 an hour versus $53 an hour, respectively.
For their research, psychologist Geoffrey Miller and colleagues visited local gentlemen's clubs and counted tips made on lap dances.
Click here to read the Psychology Today study
Dancers made about $70 an hour during their peak period of fertility, versus about $35 while menstruating and $50 in between. Researchers attributed the fluctuation in tips to the changes in body odor, waist-to-hip ratio, and facial features that occur throughout a woman's cycle.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Viva la France!
Krauthammer is always a must read.
September 28, 2007
France Flips While Congress ShiftsBy Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON -- Ahmadinejad at Columbia provided the entertainment, but Sarkozy at the U.N. provided the substance. On the largest possible stage -- the U.N. General Assembly -- President Nicolas Sarkozy put Iran on notice. His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, had said that France could live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. Sarkozy said that France cannot. He declared Iran's nuclear ambitions "an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world."
His foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, had earlier said that the world faces two choices -- successful diplomacy to stop Iran's nuclear program or war. And Sarkozy himself has no great hopes for the Security Council, where China and Russia are blocking any effective action against Iran. He does hope to get the European Union to join the U.S. in imposing serious sanctions.
"Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace," he warned. "They lead to war." This warning about appeasement was intended particularly for Germany, which for commercial reasons has been resisting U.S. pressure to support effective sanctions.
Sarkozy is no American lapdog. Like every Fifth Republic president, he begins with the notion of French exceptionalism. But whereas traditional Gaullism tended to define French grandeur as establishing a counterweight to American power, Sarkozy is not adverse to seeing French assertiveness exercised in conjunction with the United States. As Kouchner put it, "permanent anti-Americanism" is "a tradition we are working to overcome."
This French about-face creates a crucial shift in the balance of forces within Europe. The East Europeans are naturally pro-American for reasons of history (fresh memories of America's role in defeating their Soviet occupiers) and geography (physical proximity to a newly revived and aggressive Russia). Western Europe is intrinsically wary of American power and culturally anti-American by reflex. France's change from Chirac to Sarkozy, from Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin (who actively lobbied Third World countries to oppose America on Iraq) to Kouchner (who supported the U.S. invasion on humanitarian grounds) represents an enormous shift in Old Europe's relationship to the U.S.
Britain is a natural ally. Germany, given its history, is more follower than leader. France can define European policy, and Sarkozy intends to.
The French flip is only one part of the changing landscape that has given new life to Bush's Iran and Iraq policies in the waning months of his administration. The mood in Congress also has significantly shifted.
Just this week, the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for very strong sanctions on Iran and urging the administration to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guards a terrorist entity. A similar measure passed the Senate Wednesday by 76-22, declaring that it is "a critical national interest of the United States" to prevent Iran from using Shiite militias inside Iraq to subvert the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad.
A few months ago, the question was: Will the Democratic Congress force a withdrawal from Iraq? Today the question in Congress is: What can be done to achieve success in Iraq -- most specifically, by countering Iran, which is intent on seeing us fail?
This change in mood and subject is entirely the result of changes on the ground. It takes time for reality to seep into a Washington debate. But after the Petraeus-Crocker testimony, the reality of the relative success of our new counterinsurgency strategy -- and the renewed possibility of ultimate success in Iraq -- became no longer deniable.
And that reality is reflected even in the rhetoric of Hillary Clinton, the most politically sophisticated of the Democratic presidential candidates. She does vote against war funding in order to alter the president's policy (and to appease the left), but that is as a senator. When asked what she would do as president, she carefully hedges. She says that it would depend on the situation on the ground at the time. For example, whether our alliance with the Sunni tribes will have succeeded in defeating al-Qaeda in Iraq. But when asked by ABC News if she would bring U.S. troops home by January 2013, she refused to "get into hypotheticals and make pledges."
Bush's presidency -- and foreign policy -- were pronounced dead on the morning after the 2006 election. Not so. France is going to join us in a last-ditch effort to find a nonmilitary solution to the Iranian issue. And on Iraq, the relative success of the surge has won President Bush the leeway to continue the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy to the end of his term. Congress, and realistic Democrats, are finally beginning to think seriously about making that strategy succeed and planning for what comes after.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
(c) 2007, The Washington Post Writers GroupPage Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/09/sarkozy_puts_iran_on_notice.html at September 28, 2007 - 07:37:12 PM CDT
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urchinTracker();
September 28, 2007
France Flips While Congress ShiftsBy Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON -- Ahmadinejad at Columbia provided the entertainment, but Sarkozy at the U.N. provided the substance. On the largest possible stage -- the U.N. General Assembly -- President Nicolas Sarkozy put Iran on notice. His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, had said that France could live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. Sarkozy said that France cannot. He declared Iran's nuclear ambitions "an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world."
His foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, had earlier said that the world faces two choices -- successful diplomacy to stop Iran's nuclear program or war. And Sarkozy himself has no great hopes for the Security Council, where China and Russia are blocking any effective action against Iran. He does hope to get the European Union to join the U.S. in imposing serious sanctions.
"Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace," he warned. "They lead to war." This warning about appeasement was intended particularly for Germany, which for commercial reasons has been resisting U.S. pressure to support effective sanctions.
Sarkozy is no American lapdog. Like every Fifth Republic president, he begins with the notion of French exceptionalism. But whereas traditional Gaullism tended to define French grandeur as establishing a counterweight to American power, Sarkozy is not adverse to seeing French assertiveness exercised in conjunction with the United States. As Kouchner put it, "permanent anti-Americanism" is "a tradition we are working to overcome."
This French about-face creates a crucial shift in the balance of forces within Europe. The East Europeans are naturally pro-American for reasons of history (fresh memories of America's role in defeating their Soviet occupiers) and geography (physical proximity to a newly revived and aggressive Russia). Western Europe is intrinsically wary of American power and culturally anti-American by reflex. France's change from Chirac to Sarkozy, from Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin (who actively lobbied Third World countries to oppose America on Iraq) to Kouchner (who supported the U.S. invasion on humanitarian grounds) represents an enormous shift in Old Europe's relationship to the U.S.
Britain is a natural ally. Germany, given its history, is more follower than leader. France can define European policy, and Sarkozy intends to.
The French flip is only one part of the changing landscape that has given new life to Bush's Iran and Iraq policies in the waning months of his administration. The mood in Congress also has significantly shifted.
Just this week, the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for very strong sanctions on Iran and urging the administration to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guards a terrorist entity. A similar measure passed the Senate Wednesday by 76-22, declaring that it is "a critical national interest of the United States" to prevent Iran from using Shiite militias inside Iraq to subvert the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad.
A few months ago, the question was: Will the Democratic Congress force a withdrawal from Iraq? Today the question in Congress is: What can be done to achieve success in Iraq -- most specifically, by countering Iran, which is intent on seeing us fail?
This change in mood and subject is entirely the result of changes on the ground. It takes time for reality to seep into a Washington debate. But after the Petraeus-Crocker testimony, the reality of the relative success of our new counterinsurgency strategy -- and the renewed possibility of ultimate success in Iraq -- became no longer deniable.
And that reality is reflected even in the rhetoric of Hillary Clinton, the most politically sophisticated of the Democratic presidential candidates. She does vote against war funding in order to alter the president's policy (and to appease the left), but that is as a senator. When asked what she would do as president, she carefully hedges. She says that it would depend on the situation on the ground at the time. For example, whether our alliance with the Sunni tribes will have succeeded in defeating al-Qaeda in Iraq. But when asked by ABC News if she would bring U.S. troops home by January 2013, she refused to "get into hypotheticals and make pledges."
Bush's presidency -- and foreign policy -- were pronounced dead on the morning after the 2006 election. Not so. France is going to join us in a last-ditch effort to find a nonmilitary solution to the Iranian issue. And on Iraq, the relative success of the surge has won President Bush the leeway to continue the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy to the end of his term. Congress, and realistic Democrats, are finally beginning to think seriously about making that strategy succeed and planning for what comes after.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
(c) 2007, The Washington Post Writers GroupPage Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/09/sarkozy_puts_iran_on_notice.html at September 28, 2007 - 07:37:12 PM CDT
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urchinTracker();
At least Duke University has basketball
From http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/09/018598.php
September 28, 2007
A perfect storm of disgrace
Yesterday, Stuart Taylor spoke to the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Federalist Society about the Duke lacrosse "rape" case. In my view, Taylor is probably the pre-eminent reporter of legal/political matters, an enterprise to which he brings to bear great intelligence, strong knowledge of the law, and stubborn fair-mindedness.
Along with K.C. Johnson, he has written Until Proven Innocent, Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case. Today, he provided an overview of this wretched affair which, in essence, was the product of three rotten forces -- a corrupt prosecutor, a rotten academic institution, and the liberal MSM.
The prosecutor, Mike Nifong, brought charges after a woman who was about to be committed to a mental institution claimed she had been raped. In the hours immediately after making this claim, she changed her story often enough that the police officer in attendance was certain no charges would be brought. Nor would they have been, but for the fact that Nifong was facing an election he was almost certain to lose to an opponent he had once fired and who probably would have fired him, thus costing him his pension. Nifong brought the charges because he believed that pursuing a rape case, however baseless, involving a black woman and white defendants would enable him to win enough black votes in Durham to maintain office. As the accuser's story unraveled, Nifong persisted, suppressing evidence and launching an all-out media assault on the wrongfully accused Duke student-athletes. The suppression kept the case alive; the media assault furthered Nifong's political aims.
The academic institution, Duke University, contains two sets of villains -- (1) the 88 faculty members (about one-fourth of the arts and sciences faculty) who, without regard to the evidence, publicly adjudged as guilty the three accused Duke students, the entire Duke lacrosse team, and white America in general and (2) university president Richard Brodhead, who "enabled" this rabid portion of the faculty and did nothing to defend Duke's students even as their innocence became clear.
The execrable behavior of the professors is exemplified by one Houston Baker (now at Vanderbilt). The demagogic Baker excoriated the lacrosse team for their "silent whiteness" and their "white, male, athletic privilege." He called for the "immediate dismissals" by Duke of "the team itself and its players," to combat the "abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence, and drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us." After the innocence of the accused players had become clear, Baker received an email from the mother of a member of the lacrosse team (who hadn't been accused) asking if he would reconsider his earlier statements. Baker responded, by typing "LIES" and indicating that his correspondent was the mother of a "farm animal." Eventually Baker, a post-modernist if nothing else, fell back to arguing that it didn't matter whether the rape allegations were true.
But Brodhead's villainy (the below account of which goes beyond what Taylor said yesterday) arguably exceeds that of Houston Baker and the rest of the gang of 88. While, the faculty members were blinded by hatred and a dopey ideology, Brodhead saw things clearly. His actions, like Nifong's, were the result of cynicism and opportunism.
At the outset of his tenure as president of Duke, Brodhead had given Duke's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski a new multi-million dollar deal. Brodhead thus incurred the ire of many faculty members who were jealous of Coach K's deal and the status of athletics on campus that it represented. When the rape charges arose, Brodhead's options were to appease Duke's leftist faculty or to grant Duke students the presumption of innocence. The faculty made it clear to Brodhead that he could not do both. At an emergency meeting of the Academic Council on March 30, 2006, Brodhead urged caution and asked faculty to wait for the facts to come out. But the assembled professors, around 10 percent of the arts and sciences faculty, responded with vitriolic attacks against the team.
Knowing that Harvard president Larry Summers had recently lost a faculty no-confidence vote at Harvard, Brodhead made his choice. Shortly after the March 30 meeting with the faculty "lynch mob," Brodhead cancelled the lacrosse season and appointed a “Campus Culture Initiative” to explore issues raised by the case. Three of the four subcommittees were chaired by gang of 88 members. And one of the four student members had sent a nasty and arguably threatening email to the Duke lacrosse coach, a fact known to Brodhead. Thus, Brodhead "got out of jail" with his faculty by, in effect, throwing overboard three student athletes who faced the possibility of 30 years in jail, along with the rest of the lacrosse team and its coach.
The third key player in this scandal is the liberal MSM. Like the gang of 88, it viewed the case through a far leftist ideological prism and refused to let the facts stand in the way. It thereby played into the hands of the dishonest opportunist Nifong and the cynical enabler Brodhead.
Initially, the MSM arguably had an excuse. One doesn't expect a prosecutor to come on this strong with a bogus case, or a college president to throw students to the wolves. The MSMs real sins occurred after its members learned, as they quickly did, that this was just what the prosecutor and college president had done.
The New York Times, for which Stuart Taylor once worked, was (along with the Durham Herald Sun) probably the chief culprit. The Times sent sports reporter Joe Drape to investigate. Drape quickly learned facts that strongly tended to exonerate the accused players, but the Times refused to print his material. Soon, Drape was back covering horse races, replaced by Duff Wilson who took a pro-prosecution slant, thereby enabling the Times to peddle its preferred narrative of white privilege and racial oppression.
In addition, to Nifong, Duke, and the MSM, black civil rights leaders also merit dishonorable mention. Al Sharpton and company quickly piled on the innocent students, playing the race card for all it wasn't worth. That's why it's almost comical to hear Sharpton railing against prosecutorial abuse in the Jena case. Sharpton wouldn't grant the presumption of innocence to innocent white students victimized by a rogue prosecutor, yet thinks its the scandal of the century that thuggish black students were overcharged in Jena. As Taylor said yesterday, prosecutorial abuse looks like it may be a major problem in this country, so it's too bad that Sharpton and his ilk forfeited an opportunity to form a coalition with moderates and conservatives to combat it.
Out-of-control political correctness in academia and the desire to placate rabid campus race-baiters like Duke's gang of 88 has also become a serious problem. Although this story occurred at Duke, how confident can we be that the administration at Columbia (led by Lee Bollinger), at Harvard (now that the leftist faculty has ousted Larry Summers), or at other similar institutions would act differently under similar circumstances? Taylor didn't seem very confident, and I'm not confident at all.
UPDATE: A friend who has read Until Proven Innocent, and who raves about it, writes:
It seems to me that the NAACP's corrupt conduct in this case might be worthy of a blog post, as well as that of Jesse Jackson, Nancy Grace, and Wendy Murphy. Murphy and Grace came up with the ludicrous theory that the absence of DNA was inculpatory because the defendants must've conspired to withhold their DNA from the "victim" -- this despite the fact that none of the the alleged victim's multiple versions of events ever asserted that the defendants used condoms and that all her versions made much more graphic claims that would result in a positive DNA result.
This was an example of Jesse Jackson's contribution.
September 28, 2007
A perfect storm of disgrace
Yesterday, Stuart Taylor spoke to the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Federalist Society about the Duke lacrosse "rape" case. In my view, Taylor is probably the pre-eminent reporter of legal/political matters, an enterprise to which he brings to bear great intelligence, strong knowledge of the law, and stubborn fair-mindedness.
Along with K.C. Johnson, he has written Until Proven Innocent, Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case. Today, he provided an overview of this wretched affair which, in essence, was the product of three rotten forces -- a corrupt prosecutor, a rotten academic institution, and the liberal MSM.
The prosecutor, Mike Nifong, brought charges after a woman who was about to be committed to a mental institution claimed she had been raped. In the hours immediately after making this claim, she changed her story often enough that the police officer in attendance was certain no charges would be brought. Nor would they have been, but for the fact that Nifong was facing an election he was almost certain to lose to an opponent he had once fired and who probably would have fired him, thus costing him his pension. Nifong brought the charges because he believed that pursuing a rape case, however baseless, involving a black woman and white defendants would enable him to win enough black votes in Durham to maintain office. As the accuser's story unraveled, Nifong persisted, suppressing evidence and launching an all-out media assault on the wrongfully accused Duke student-athletes. The suppression kept the case alive; the media assault furthered Nifong's political aims.
The academic institution, Duke University, contains two sets of villains -- (1) the 88 faculty members (about one-fourth of the arts and sciences faculty) who, without regard to the evidence, publicly adjudged as guilty the three accused Duke students, the entire Duke lacrosse team, and white America in general and (2) university president Richard Brodhead, who "enabled" this rabid portion of the faculty and did nothing to defend Duke's students even as their innocence became clear.
The execrable behavior of the professors is exemplified by one Houston Baker (now at Vanderbilt). The demagogic Baker excoriated the lacrosse team for their "silent whiteness" and their "white, male, athletic privilege." He called for the "immediate dismissals" by Duke of "the team itself and its players," to combat the "abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence, and drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us." After the innocence of the accused players had become clear, Baker received an email from the mother of a member of the lacrosse team (who hadn't been accused) asking if he would reconsider his earlier statements. Baker responded, by typing "LIES" and indicating that his correspondent was the mother of a "farm animal." Eventually Baker, a post-modernist if nothing else, fell back to arguing that it didn't matter whether the rape allegations were true.
But Brodhead's villainy (the below account of which goes beyond what Taylor said yesterday) arguably exceeds that of Houston Baker and the rest of the gang of 88. While, the faculty members were blinded by hatred and a dopey ideology, Brodhead saw things clearly. His actions, like Nifong's, were the result of cynicism and opportunism.
At the outset of his tenure as president of Duke, Brodhead had given Duke's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski a new multi-million dollar deal. Brodhead thus incurred the ire of many faculty members who were jealous of Coach K's deal and the status of athletics on campus that it represented. When the rape charges arose, Brodhead's options were to appease Duke's leftist faculty or to grant Duke students the presumption of innocence. The faculty made it clear to Brodhead that he could not do both. At an emergency meeting of the Academic Council on March 30, 2006, Brodhead urged caution and asked faculty to wait for the facts to come out. But the assembled professors, around 10 percent of the arts and sciences faculty, responded with vitriolic attacks against the team.
Knowing that Harvard president Larry Summers had recently lost a faculty no-confidence vote at Harvard, Brodhead made his choice. Shortly after the March 30 meeting with the faculty "lynch mob," Brodhead cancelled the lacrosse season and appointed a “Campus Culture Initiative” to explore issues raised by the case. Three of the four subcommittees were chaired by gang of 88 members. And one of the four student members had sent a nasty and arguably threatening email to the Duke lacrosse coach, a fact known to Brodhead. Thus, Brodhead "got out of jail" with his faculty by, in effect, throwing overboard three student athletes who faced the possibility of 30 years in jail, along with the rest of the lacrosse team and its coach.
The third key player in this scandal is the liberal MSM. Like the gang of 88, it viewed the case through a far leftist ideological prism and refused to let the facts stand in the way. It thereby played into the hands of the dishonest opportunist Nifong and the cynical enabler Brodhead.
Initially, the MSM arguably had an excuse. One doesn't expect a prosecutor to come on this strong with a bogus case, or a college president to throw students to the wolves. The MSMs real sins occurred after its members learned, as they quickly did, that this was just what the prosecutor and college president had done.
The New York Times, for which Stuart Taylor once worked, was (along with the Durham Herald Sun) probably the chief culprit. The Times sent sports reporter Joe Drape to investigate. Drape quickly learned facts that strongly tended to exonerate the accused players, but the Times refused to print his material. Soon, Drape was back covering horse races, replaced by Duff Wilson who took a pro-prosecution slant, thereby enabling the Times to peddle its preferred narrative of white privilege and racial oppression.
In addition, to Nifong, Duke, and the MSM, black civil rights leaders also merit dishonorable mention. Al Sharpton and company quickly piled on the innocent students, playing the race card for all it wasn't worth. That's why it's almost comical to hear Sharpton railing against prosecutorial abuse in the Jena case. Sharpton wouldn't grant the presumption of innocence to innocent white students victimized by a rogue prosecutor, yet thinks its the scandal of the century that thuggish black students were overcharged in Jena. As Taylor said yesterday, prosecutorial abuse looks like it may be a major problem in this country, so it's too bad that Sharpton and his ilk forfeited an opportunity to form a coalition with moderates and conservatives to combat it.
Out-of-control political correctness in academia and the desire to placate rabid campus race-baiters like Duke's gang of 88 has also become a serious problem. Although this story occurred at Duke, how confident can we be that the administration at Columbia (led by Lee Bollinger), at Harvard (now that the leftist faculty has ousted Larry Summers), or at other similar institutions would act differently under similar circumstances? Taylor didn't seem very confident, and I'm not confident at all.
UPDATE: A friend who has read Until Proven Innocent, and who raves about it, writes:
It seems to me that the NAACP's corrupt conduct in this case might be worthy of a blog post, as well as that of Jesse Jackson, Nancy Grace, and Wendy Murphy. Murphy and Grace came up with the ludicrous theory that the absence of DNA was inculpatory because the defendants must've conspired to withhold their DNA from the "victim" -- this despite the fact that none of the the alleged victim's multiple versions of events ever asserted that the defendants used condoms and that all her versions made much more graphic claims that would result in a positive DNA result.
This was an example of Jesse Jackson's contribution.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Ohhhhh Caaaaaanadaaaaaa! Cough cough!
September 19, 2007
Nationalized Health Care is BrokenBy John Stossel
Last week I pointed out that Michael Moore, maker of the documentary "Sicko," portrayed the Cuban health-care system as though it were utopia -- until I hit him with some inconvenient facts. So he backed off and said, "Let's stick to Canada and Britain because I think these are legitimate arguments that are made against the film and against the so-called idea of socialized medicine. And I think you should challenge me on these things."
OK, here we go.
One basic problem with nationalized health care is that it makes medical services seem free. That pushes demand beyond supply. Governments deal with that by limiting what's available.
That's why the British National Health Service recently made the pathetic promise to reduce wait times for hospital care to four months.
The wait to see dentists is so long that some Brits pull their own teeth. Dental tools: pliers and vodka.
One hospital tried to save money by not changing bed sheets every day. British papers report that instead of washing them, nurses were encouraged to just turn them over.
Government rationing of health care in Canada is why when Karen Jepp was about to give birth to quadruplets last month, she was told that all the neonatal units she could go to in Canada were too crowded. She flew to Montana to have the babies.
"People line up for care; some of them die. That's what happens," Canadian doctor David Gratzer, author of The Cure, told "20/20". Gratzer thought the Canadian system was great until he started treating patients.
"The more time I spent in the Canadian system, the more I came across people waiting. ... You want to see your neurologist because of your stress headache? No problem! You just have to wait six months. You want an MRI? No problem! Free as the air! You just gotta wait six months."
Michael Moore retorts that Canadians live longer than Americans.
But Canadians' longer lives are unrelated to heath care. Canadians are less likely to get into accidents or be murdered. Take those factors into account, not to mention obesity, and Americans live longer.
Most Canadians like their free health care, but Canadian doctors tell us the system is cracking. More than a million Canadians cannot find a regular family doctor. One town holds a lottery. Once a week the town clerk gets a box out of the closet. Everyone who wants to have a family doctor puts his or her name in it. The clerk pulls out one slip to determine the winner. Others in town have to wait.
It's driven some Canadians to private for-profit clinics. A new one opens somewhere in Canada almost every week. Although it's not clear that such private clinics are legal, one is run by the president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Brian Day, because under government care, he says, "We found ourselves in a situation where we were seeing sick patients and weren't being allowed to treat them. That was something that we couldn't tolerate."
Canadians stuck on waiting lists often pay "medical travel agents" to get to America for treatment. Shirley Healey had a blocked artery that kept her from digesting food. So she hired a middleman to help her get to a hospital in Washington state.
"The doctor said that I would have only had a very few weeks to live," Healey said.
Yet the Canadian government calls her surgery "elective."
"The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live," she said.
Not all Canadian health care is long lines and lack of innovation. We found one place where providers offer easy access to cutting-edge life-saving technology, such as CT scans. And patients rarely wait.
But they have to bark or meow to get access to this technology. Vet clinics say they can get a dog or a cat in the next day. People have to wait a month.
Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/09/socialized_medicine_is_broken.html at September 19, 2007 - 07:34:22 PM CDT
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urchinTracker();
Nationalized Health Care is BrokenBy John Stossel
Last week I pointed out that Michael Moore, maker of the documentary "Sicko," portrayed the Cuban health-care system as though it were utopia -- until I hit him with some inconvenient facts. So he backed off and said, "Let's stick to Canada and Britain because I think these are legitimate arguments that are made against the film and against the so-called idea of socialized medicine. And I think you should challenge me on these things."
OK, here we go.
One basic problem with nationalized health care is that it makes medical services seem free. That pushes demand beyond supply. Governments deal with that by limiting what's available.
That's why the British National Health Service recently made the pathetic promise to reduce wait times for hospital care to four months.
The wait to see dentists is so long that some Brits pull their own teeth. Dental tools: pliers and vodka.
One hospital tried to save money by not changing bed sheets every day. British papers report that instead of washing them, nurses were encouraged to just turn them over.
Government rationing of health care in Canada is why when Karen Jepp was about to give birth to quadruplets last month, she was told that all the neonatal units she could go to in Canada were too crowded. She flew to Montana to have the babies.
"People line up for care; some of them die. That's what happens," Canadian doctor David Gratzer, author of The Cure, told "20/20". Gratzer thought the Canadian system was great until he started treating patients.
"The more time I spent in the Canadian system, the more I came across people waiting. ... You want to see your neurologist because of your stress headache? No problem! You just have to wait six months. You want an MRI? No problem! Free as the air! You just gotta wait six months."
Michael Moore retorts that Canadians live longer than Americans.
But Canadians' longer lives are unrelated to heath care. Canadians are less likely to get into accidents or be murdered. Take those factors into account, not to mention obesity, and Americans live longer.
Most Canadians like their free health care, but Canadian doctors tell us the system is cracking. More than a million Canadians cannot find a regular family doctor. One town holds a lottery. Once a week the town clerk gets a box out of the closet. Everyone who wants to have a family doctor puts his or her name in it. The clerk pulls out one slip to determine the winner. Others in town have to wait.
It's driven some Canadians to private for-profit clinics. A new one opens somewhere in Canada almost every week. Although it's not clear that such private clinics are legal, one is run by the president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Brian Day, because under government care, he says, "We found ourselves in a situation where we were seeing sick patients and weren't being allowed to treat them. That was something that we couldn't tolerate."
Canadians stuck on waiting lists often pay "medical travel agents" to get to America for treatment. Shirley Healey had a blocked artery that kept her from digesting food. So she hired a middleman to help her get to a hospital in Washington state.
"The doctor said that I would have only had a very few weeks to live," Healey said.
Yet the Canadian government calls her surgery "elective."
"The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live," she said.
Not all Canadian health care is long lines and lack of innovation. We found one place where providers offer easy access to cutting-edge life-saving technology, such as CT scans. And patients rarely wait.
But they have to bark or meow to get access to this technology. Vet clinics say they can get a dog or a cat in the next day. People have to wait a month.
Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/09/socialized_medicine_is_broken.html at September 19, 2007 - 07:34:22 PM CDT
_uacct = "UA-31527-1";
urchinTracker();
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