Yes.

This may be obvious to everybody else by now, but it wasn’t obvious to me until today.

At first (and still, to some extent), I didn’t think it mattered much just what we called it–it was murder, I’d also say treason, and certainly worth the death penalty.  There were plenty of more important aspects to this event.  And I have no idea whether anything yet to come in the legal prosecution of this case depends upon whether it’s determined to be “terrorism” or not.

Be that as it may, today I realized that it was definitely terrorism, and it isn’t even a close call.  The only reason it’s being discussed is that nobody has ever officially defined just what terrorism is.  It’s been one of those “I know it when I see it” kind of things.  Until now.  Today, this analogy popped to mind:

If Hassan had strapped a bomb to his body, or planted it in a car, and had he then caused it to explode in an area on Fort Hood where 14 people would be killed and 38 more wounded, it would clearly be called “terrorism.”  The only difference between that scenario and what actually transpired is the weapon of choice.

Although analogies don’t always work as a means to explain unusual events, this one seems to be pretty exact.  In fact, it shows just how mundane the event was, unusual only in the fact that it occurred on American soil.  I think it also puts to rest the idea that it was simply the act of a “wacky psychiatrist,” a point that al Qaeda apologists seem to never tire of making.

It’s time to recognize the fact that we have allowed the 9/10 mindset to creep back to life, and that fear of reprisals for “political incorrectness” prevented this terrorist from being identified and perhaps stopped before he killed.

This appeared in only slightly different format as a comment on a front page column, responding to the question, “What is a moderate?” Due to overwhelming popular demand (Penguin and Jaded) I’m posting it here with only slight modification….

“Moderate” is a label other people apply to someone more frequently than they apply it to themselves. I notice that it isn’t often applied to Democrats, and nobody cares about that. In general, it means “not fully committed,” so maybe many of us are moderate in the literal sense when all the issues are considered. However…

A moderate Democrat might be one who doesn’t believe that Barack Obama can walk on water. Or he might be one who acknowledges that ACORN’s main political purpose is to use all means available, including illegal ones, to defeat Republicans at every election. But he still believes in taxing the rich and spending what’s left after the government gets its cut on “the poor,” and he believes that will work for the country.

A moderate Republican might be one who is pro-choice, or one who is in favor of government health insurance subsidies for people who can’t buy their own. But he still knows that raising tax rates from current levels will not result in higher tax revenues, and he knows that the expansion of government and its accompanying tax burden is a stultifying burden on the country.

But the Democrat who recognizes that running a trillion dollar deficit for ten years is the path to national irrelevancy for the US, and who recognizes that the government can’t be all things for all people, has gone beyond moderation–he’s almost found his way to sanity. And the Republican who is pro-choice AND believes that the stimulus has been a good thing AND thinks the government health option and takeover might be a good thing AND supports Cap-and-Tax AND is pro Card Check AND is supported by ACORN and George Soros, is also beyond moderation. She has crossed over into the land where reality is a social construct, not a fact of life. These are the “Media Moderates.” They are on the brink of switching parties. But they aren’t the “Independent Moderates,” who are officially unaffiliated with either major party.

Independent Moderates are vaguely interested in political issues, and they may have decided to vote for the Democrats or the Republicans, but they couldn’t explain to you why they made those decisions in a way that will pass a ‘reasonableness’ test. It’s impossible to reason with an Independent Moderate because they generally don’t understand what’s going on.

So, I’d say the Media Moderates the press likes to talk about may not exist except in the guise of a small number of folks who are in the process of realigning themselves with a different party anyway. Real-life Moderate Republicans and Democrats are generally in accord with their party’s tenets, and they aren’t about to switch, or to be booted out, either.

Interesting that the press never seems to care about the other end of either party (well, not of the Democrats, anyway). The Extremists are the ones who are almost off the party reservation because they think their party hasn’t been true to its own principles. Those are certainly the people the Republicans are in danger of losing, yet nobody notices that on Sunday morning, and there are a lot more of them than there are “moderate” Republicans threatening to leap left. Extremists are also the Democrats that Obama is most worried about losing. Why else would he be so worried about doing the right thing in Afghanistan, the course he decided upon last March?

To sum up, Extremists are people who are actually thinking about current problems and issues. They are strongly in opposition to each other, but they know what they believe and why they believe it. They deserve respect, not derision.  Yet all the attention and concern is directed to Media and Independent Moderates.

Ya’ know what? I credit Obama and the Democrats because they are worried about losing their Extremists. They recognize that without them, they don’t have a party base. If only the Republicans can catch on soon.

He only needs to take a few simple steps.  It’s easier than cutting out cigarettes.

• Make an immediate decision on General McChrystal’s request for at least 40,000 more troops for Afghanistan.  For re-election purposes it almost doesn’t matter what the decision is, because his dithering is the obvious problem.
• Announce that he will veto any health-related bill that will increase government spending AT ALL.  That is, not just "paid for," but it may not have ANY cost.
• Immediately terminate disbursements from the stimulus package.  If it hasn’t been promised, don’t promise it.  If it can remain unspent, don’t spend it.
• Order his "czars" to wind up their work within six weeks, without spending any money.  (No need to drag things out to Christmas.)
• Set up a schedule for the recipients of TARP money to repay their loans.
• Set up a schedule to dispose of all government owned stock in GM, Chrysler, and any other "private" companies (not including retirement plans, of course).
• Instruct Congress to make the Bush tax cuts permanent.  Include a reduction in business taxes.  Keep capital gains taxes at current rates.  Announce that he intends to make it all permanent.
• Scrap the latest budget.  Cut spending.  Cut the deficit.  Cut deficit projections as a result.  Create a new budget with a much lower spending total.
• Most important, he must announce that he recognizes the economic danger posed by expansion of government and expansion of deficits and national debt.  He must unequivocally state that he will veto any attempt to increase non-Constitutionally required budget items during his term in office and that he will turn down spending programs of any kind, including stimulus plans, even those that are directed at propping up state governments.  If he institutes a budget "freeze," so much the better.

If he takes these steps, the economy will turn on a dime, we’ll be booming by 2012, and he’ll easily achieve re-election.

Two of the health issues that we all seem to generally agree about are the desirability of portable insurance policies and facilitating access to affordable policies by everyone who wants to buy them.  Both of those goals are achievable without a massive overhaul of the existing health care and insurance industries.  There are more than a few ways to skin those cats, but let’s look at what is possible.

Portability

Obviously, this hasn’t happened before because most people get their health insurance at work, and each business bargains individually for the best appropriate and affordable deal it can get for its employees, whether the company pays some or all of the cost.  When Earnest Employee moves to a new employer, he leaves his old job behind, including his old health insurance.  This arrangement is a result of the tax benefit bestowed upon employers and employees alike by recognizing the employer’s share as a deductible business expense, and not taxing the benefit to the individual employee.

This can easily be changed, at least more easily and far cheaper than setting up a bureaucracy to generate and administer government insurance.  Briefly

• Phase out health insurance deductions for employers.  Caring employers could increase salaries in the amount of their reduced health insurance costs, less FICA and Medicare tax.  Or just continue to allow business tax deductions for health insurance allowances paid directly to employees.
• Institute a “refundable” tax credit up to $X for health insurance expenses, medical and dental expenses, HMO memberships, and to fund Health Savings Accounts.
• Allow individuals to deduct from income similar medical costs in excess of the tax credit amount.
• Allow insurance companies to sell products covering all aspects of health care “across state lines.”  This could still allow state insurance commissioners to regulate the policies to some extent, but thousands of policies would quickly become available for purchase by individuals.
• Require medical providers who accept any insurance to accept all insurance, but allow them to price as they desire.  This would give insurers an incentive to negotiate lower prices with providers, as Blue Cross/Blue Shield does now.  HMO’s should be allowed to charge their own members less than “outsiders.”
• Catastrophic care insurance must be allowed.

To a certain extent, this might shift some health insurance costs from employers to the federal and state governments.  That would depend most directly upon how big the tax credit is, but if we want portability, it has to cost something.  It would also cost far less than paying the salaries, business buildings, benefits and taxes and un-reimbursed expenses of a new bureaucracy and its employees.  This approach is essentially what McCain suggested during his inept campaign.  It is still a better idea than ZerOcare.  It’s more complex than our current system, of course, but it facilitates portability.

Accessibility

If the portability plan is implemented, accessibility for all is a quick side benefit.  The same plans available to Earnest Employee will be available to Ulysses Unemployed.  He can take his tax credit and buy health insurance and/or medical care, or fund a Health Savings Account, just as Ernie can.  (Some legislation might be needed to specify a way for the unemployed to pay their premiums before they receive their refund, but it could work like food stamps or FEMA payments, perhaps.)

Cost containment and affordability are harder nuts to crack, but with the individual controlling his own medical encounters and choosing his own insurance provider, there will be the true competition that ZerOcare only fantasizes about.

Coverage of pre-existing conditions?  With all the subsidies this plan would give to the individual to buy health insurance, there should be nobody who isn’t permanently covered (after a phase-in period, subsidized by us, the taxpayers).  In fact, the one coverage it might make sense for the government to provide could be “pre-existing conditions” coverage.  Again, not an insurmountable obstacle.

Finally, nobody could deliver on the promises that The One made tonight.  We shouldn’t even try.

My Dear Sir/Madam:

You have been telling me that it’s imperative to pass a health care/health insurance/health delivery bill that would overhaul our current system (one that over 80% of us are fairly happy with) at a cost of about $1,500,000,000,000 over the next ten years.  That’s $1.5 trillion dollars above and beyond the amount that the bill is designed to recoup in additional taxes and reduced payments to Medicare practitioners.

You’ve also supported a $1 trillion “stimulus” bill, one that was passed in haste, even without beIng read, because it was deemed essential to jump start the economy immediately.  Yet nine months later, less than 10% of that money has been distributed, and that has gone to some of the least stimulative programs available.

You allowed/abetted the government takeover of two-thirds of the American auto industry.  You paid out good money, lots of it, stole assets from the bondholders of both companies, and gave the results to an Italian company and the UAW.  The excuse given was that it would protect American jobs and avoid bankruptcies.  Yet, neither goal was met.

You and your party are in favor of the Cap-and-Trade Bill, (even though you may have voted against it for re-election positioning purposes).  It passed in the House.  It will impose huge costs on all Americans, in addition to being a true boondoggle which will have none of the benefits claimed for it.

Finally, you wasted $3 billion of our grandchildren’s taxes on the Cash for Clunkers program.  To subsidize the sale of about 750,000 vehicles (most of them non-American made) over the last few weeks, you gave that $3 billion to consumers.  But that money is NOT in the budget.  Maybe it came out of the stimulus package.  In any event, the money isn’t in the piggy bank, either.  It is being borrowed by the sale of long-term government bonds.  The end result is that the government is doing something that no sensible individual would do–it’s paying for an automobile down payment with a 30-year loan.  Thus, our grandchildren, even our great-grandchildren, will be paying taxes to repay it when that bill comes due, and we’ll all be paying taxes on the interest in the meantime.  And even the most optimistic projection is that it will result in the reduction of carbon emissions by only 0.0006%.  Hardly even measurable.

So, STOP SPENDING.  Everything you vote for that increases spending, whether you have theoretically “paid for” it with increased taxes or decreased spending elsewhere, still results in an expenditure that wasn’t required last year, last decade, or last century. We got along without it before we met it, we can get along without it now.

The national debt is now about $12,000,000,000,000, and the President is proposing that we add over $1 trillion a year to it for the next several years.  That is unsustainable.  If you can reduce spending elsewhere, DO IT.  Use that savings to reduce the deficit, to add less to the national debt every year.  If you have found a source of painless tax revenues that you can tap to spend for a new project, TAP IT TO REDUCE OUR DEFICIT INSTEAD and hold off on the new project.

If you want to help even more, start rescinding last year’s new spending projects.  And the years’ before that. If they had really been essential, they would have been essential a long time ago. The only exception would be that spending to support the war and the safety of our troops is indeed essential.  It is also spending that can be cut out of the budget once we win the war.  I would also exempt long-term capital spending projects, one example of which might be procurement of military weapons systems.  There are other similar non-military exemptions as well, of course.  But in general, STOP SPENDING OUR GRANDCHILDREN’S MONEY ON NEW PROJECTS!

It’s been said that a Democrat never saw a spending bill he didn’t like.  It’s time to change that impression.  It’s time to say, “I CAN’T SEE ANY NEW SPENDING BILL THAT I LIKE, not until the deficit gets back to where it was in 2000.”

And that goes for Republicans, too.

If Barack Obama were truly interested in improving “Health Care” for Americans, he has a very simple way to prove it to all of us non-believers.  I mentioned it to Mrs. Flagstaff (who is already registered to be in Atlanta next year) the other day, and since then I’ve heard the same general idea mentioned by such estimable people as Rep. Michelle Bachmann, among others.  The simple procedure?

He simply has to lead the way in solving the problems of Medicare.  We all know what they are–not enough money, too many obligations, no way to rein it in.  It even goes broke before Social Security does.

Since he is proposing to put everyone within the boundaries of America on the equivalent of Medicare, he should first prove that he can make his plan work for the smaller subset of the population who are already (often against their will) dependent upon government health insurance, if not government health care.  While he’s at it, he should bring the VA system up to snuff, because it truly is government health care, and it treats the most important of our citizens.

Don’t say that it isn’t fair to make those demands because the elderly are much more expensive to cover than are the younger citizenry.  That may be true, but everybody who is working, young and old alike, are already paying Medicare taxes.  He is presently essentially proposing to add many millions more people into that same system, or one just like it.  It is eminently fair to suggest that he solve the VA’s and Medicare’s problems first, before he compounds them by adding the rest of us into the coverage pool.

If he can do that without resorting to borrowing to cover expenses, without eliminating the Medicare Advantage plans which provide many of us with catastrophic care coverage, without resorting to other taxes to cover the new expenses, without resorting to accounting sleight-of-hand which postpones benefits while it moves revenues forward, then, and only then, will I believe that he can create a national, government-run health plan that will work and be self-sufficient.

I criticized her recently.  Today I must praise her.  Her column, which appeared in Town Hall yesterday and in some newspapers today, is a very good summary of the Utah health care plan developed under Governor Jon Huntsman.  That’s a plan I never heard of before.

She goes into what it is, why it is, and how it differs from ObamaCare in fact and in developmental process.  If nothing else, it could serve as a Republican alternative, a better one than MassCare.  Heh.  She also touched on the possibility that Huntsman was chosen to be the Ambassador to China in order to get him as far away from the Health Care debate as possible, then fairly adds that his Chinese language skills make him an ideal Ambassador as well.

Briefly, she points out that UtahCare (I don’t know if they will call it that–it doesn’t go into effect until this fall, so of course we also don’t know if it will work) addresses the real problems of both health care and health insurance.  It attacks the expense of insurance coverage for the working poor by creating

an exchange focused on improving insurance options for them and leaves alone those with good insurance today. And the exchange facilitates consumer choice based on price transparency, not government regulation and control.

One reform, for example, creates portable coverage — insurance policies that workers can take with them when they leave or change jobs and that can be paid for with pre-tax dollars. Utah consumers also can pick the insurance program that best suits them, taking into consideration cost and level of benefits needed. To assist, the state launched a Web site where consumers can compare policies, pricing and financing, and sign up electronically — all in one place.

And she follows with a contrast to the Obama approach of posing the Health Care situation as a crisis, requiring the adoption of the very first solution proposed–

Not surprisingly, Utah’s plan resulted from months of research, consensus-building and meetings among legislators, health care providers, insurers, businesses and community members. It hasn’t happened quickly, in other words — nor is the process over. A few problems have been resolved using the best free-market principles, while others will be tackled down the road.

That is to say, health care is complicated and reform takes time.

As noted, we don’t yet know just what will happen in the Utah Experimental Laboratory.  Maybe they’ll fail as Massachusetts and Hawaii did.  But Parker sums the principles up very well.

Compared to what’s being trotted around the Asylum On The Hill, Utah’s bipartisan reform project sounds downright dreamy. Simple and geared toward the consumer, it was designed under the operating principle that Americans are capable of making their own decisions, whereas the Obama plan presumes that only government can solve the problem.

Kathleen Parker, I salute you.  If the purpose of the free press is to inform, you have succeeded admirably.

When we compare our present state of health care with that of countries with socialized medicine, such as Canada and Great Britain, there is one giant difference that is almost never pointed out.  It may be alluded to in passing, but it’s almost never addressed directly.  I’ll get to it in a few paragraphs, but first, how are the systems similar?

First, some people never get the treatment they need, under both systems.  This is undeniable.

Second, some people have access to better health care providers than do others.  Often it’s the richer patients who get the better care.  Be real.  Richer folks always can get better anything.  It’s life.

Third, both systems have entrenched networks of doctors and a bureaucracy who have a vested interest in keeping the system in place, and a contrasting network of doctors who say the system is failing.

Fourth, patients might have to wait for treatment under both systems.

Now, for the difference that doesn’t rate a mention in the news, and it’s the reason that our system is the one that patients from other systems fall back on when they run into similarity number one.

Patients in the United States might not get the treatment they need because of its high cost, lack of insurance, or rejection by their insurance carrier.  But if they run into this situation, they have recourse.  They can borrow money to pay.  Friends and neighbors fund-raise for them.  Doctors and hospitals reduce their fees, or grant them long repayment schedules.  They even take credit cards.  Still, some don’t get treated.

Patients in Canada might not get treatment they need because they have to wait so long for it (issue number four) that it’s no longer effective, or they’ve died.  But it isn’t because they couldn’t pay for it.  It’s because there is no doctor or facility to deliver the care.

Simply put, in the US we might have some patients who get no treatment because they can’t afford it.  In Canada, they don’t get treatment because it isn’t available.

Under which of these systems would you rather live?  One where you might not be able to afford care, yet there are ways to make it affordable, or one where the care might just be not there at all, one where you can’t get it whether you can afford it or not?

I go with the former.

Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, appeared on Fox News Sunday yesterday, delivering the party line on the topic of the takeover of health care by the Obama administration.  In doing so, he unleashed some whoppers on the viewing audience.  Those included:

[The] President said yesterday he will not sign a bill that expands the deficit….

Once you take into account the — just maintaining current payments for Medicare doctor — for doctors under Medicare, that bill is deficit neutral….

No. What — president has said that the bill has to be deficit neutral. If you actually look at the CBO score that came out on Friday night — and again, take off the table just maintaining current payment rates for physicians under Medicare — that bill is deficit neutral….

No, the Medicare — the payments to physicians is in the legislation, and that is the only reason that the bill shows a deficit. Once you take that part out, the bill is deficit neutral….

The bill prevents that cut in payments, but no one ever thought that you’d have a 20 percent reduction in Medicare in reimbursement rates for doctors. That was going to happen regardless. It so happens they added that to this piece of legislation, but that’s sort of already baked in to our fiscal trajectory.

We’re looking at what’s happening with regard to new policy. And with regard to new policy, this is deficit neutral over the first decade. There are additional steps that are necessary to make it even better than that over the long term, and I think the single most important thing is this proposal that we have for an independent commission to help bring down costs over the long haul.

Chris Wallace tried to pin him down on the fact that he was basically claiming that the bill would be deficit neutral except for the parts that make it not deficit neutral.

WALLACE: Well, wait, because there’s that little caveat in there. In fact, what the CBO said on Friday is that the bill the House is now considering and rushing to pass, in fact, would add $240 billion to the deficit by 2019.

Now, there’s talk — as you say, there’s a dispute about Medicare payments to doctors. That’s not in the legislation….

WALLACE: That’s what I’m saying. But the — but the reform you’re talking about — the cut in payments is not in the bill….

WALLACE: Which is also not in the legislation.

ORSZAG: Not yet.

It would have been laughable had it not been deadly serious for our economy and our descendants.  He went on in a similar vein regarding the taxes that the President has in mind for us.  Overall, it’s clear that these people believe that they can make anything “deficit neutral” by simply raising tax rates on a select group of taxpayers, and that these taxpayers will happily accept the burden even though they will receive no benefit whatsoever from it.

This later exchange regarding the economy is particularly uncomfortable if you like Orszag:

WALLACE: Let’s turn, in the time we have left, to the economy. When Congress passed the $787 billion stimulus, the White House said that it would keep unemployment a little over, at the top, 8 percent. It’s now, as you well now, at 9.5 percent.

And I want to put up the projections this week from the Federal Reserve. They forecast it may hit 10.1 percent in the fourth quarter of this year and will still be 9.5 to 9.8 percent at the end of next year. Do you agree with those numbers? And why were all of you in the White House so wrong?

ORSZAG: Well, look. If you look back last December or so, everyone - - almost everyone — thought that the economy was not as weak as it actually was.

You can’t go from job losses of 700,000 a month, which is what was happening in the months leading up to January, to job growth like that, you know, just instantaneously. It is going to take some time to work our way out of this.

The situation in December and in January was worse than most people thought….

WALLACE: But you passed… the stimulus in February. You knew how bad the situation — I mean, the president kept saying that it was a catastrophe.

ORSZAG: No, no, but it was even worse than people thought. If you look back at the majority of the Blue Chip forecasts and the other forecasts, including from the Federal Reserve, late last year, which is what we were basing our projections on at the time, they were all somewhat too optimistic because the economy was weaker at that time than anyone anticipated.

What we’re trying to do is focus on how we can — and also remember, that sense of free fall, minus 6 percent on GDP growth — that is attenuated. There’s still a lot more that needs to be done.

WALLACE: But just…

ORSZAG: But we’re not — we’re not in the same position that we were then.

I added the emphasis.  Note how Orszag tries to claim innocence by way of ignorance–”almost everyone — thought that the economy was not as weak as it actually was.”  “The situation in December and in January was worse than most people thought.” That is a flat-out lie, as is the long statement about Blue Chip forecasts.  The only Pollyanna at that time was Barack Obama–he of the 4 to 6 percent growth projection in 2010.  But it is true that the President did call it a catastrophe.  You could add “the worst economy since the Great Depression.”  So how can Orszag claim that it’s even worse.  Think about that–it’s even worse than a catastrophe.  What, exactly is worse than a catastrophe? And if it is that bad, why didn’t they recognize it? And now that they’ve recognized it, why are the stimulus funds still held back for spending in 2010-2012?

Maybe it’s summed up in the final quote, “we’re not in the same position that we were then.”  No we aren’t.  Thanks to your policies, we are far worse.  Either you don’t know what you’re doing, or you’re driving us to the poorhouse intentionally.

On to Senator Judd Gregg.  Why do I say he missed an opportunity?  Chris Wallace didn’t toss up some softball questions, but he did ask questions that could have allowed Gregg to point out the errors in Orszag’s statements.

WALLACE: I’d like to get you to react to what you just heard from Peter Orszag. First of all, he says that what the president ends up signing, one, won’t add to the deficit and, two, will cut health care costs.

Gregg was allowed three paragraphs to answer.  Instead of pointing out directly that Orszag was (one) wrong in his conclusions and (two) was wrong on his facts and (three) was supporting an impossible proposition, he chose to speak in tongues–parenthetical phrases abounded, and he ended by agreeing that Congress must do “better.”  It’s indescribable, but you can read it:

GREGG: Well, he disagrees, obviously, with the CBO director on the second point. The issue of whether it adds to the deficit will be a determination of how much they’re willing to raise taxes.

But the real question here — and I think it was — the nail was hit on the head by Mr. Elmendorf, who’s head of CBO — and who is, by the way, appointed by the Democratic leadership of the House and the Senate — and he said that this bill as proposed — or the bills as proposed would significantly aggravate the health care cost situation, that the cost of health care would go up significantly, and that it would raise significantly the burden on the federal government as to what it had to pay.

And as a very practical matter, it did nothing in the out years to contain the rate of growth of health care costs. Those were pretty damning words, to be very honest with you, and they should make us step back, pause and take a look at the — what’s going forward in the Congress and say, “How can we do this better?” And there are ways to do this better.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, he then got hung up in minutia about details of a letter Orszag had sent to him and Senator Conrad.  Eyes glazed over across the nation.  If you want those gory details, just follow the link above.

Where he really missed the boat, though, was in this exchange:

WALLACE: … if I may just ask, are you saying, though, that the — that the current system, with 47 million people uninsured and with health care costs running way above inflation, is better for the country?

GREGG: No, that’s unacceptable. And in fact, you’ll — in the Senate, at least, there are three major health care proposals from Republicans. I have one, Senator Burr — Senator Coburn has one, and then there’s a bipartisan one — Senator Wyden, Senator Bennett — which would get where we need to go, which is cover everybody and bend the out-year costs of health care without going down the road of this massive expansion of the government role in health care and the massive increase in costs which are proposed in the two bills that have been voted on.

Remember, the two bills that have been voted on so far are the Kennedy bill coming out of the Health Committee, which I serve on, which — yes, it was a party-line bill, because that bill is basically your old-fashioned expand the government, let’s take over the system approach, and the House bill, which was even worse.

And basically, both of those bills lead to putting the bureaucracy between you and your doctor, and I believe they lead to delay and rationing in the end.

A more effective answer would have combined the ideas of the second and third paragraphs, after first stressing that “It’s far better to continue work to find a solution that will work without bankrupting the country and assigning the costs of whatever is done to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, than to support these flawed bills that not only won’t work, they’ll make matters worse.  A government takeover of the health care system is just not acceptable to the American people.  And health care costs aren’t running above inflation because people are uninsured, but because the technology of health care is improving daily and it’s being used by people who are alredy insured.  If you think it’s expensive now, wait until 40 million more people receive health insurance they don’t have to pay for themselves.”

As for the rest of his interview, I hated it.  Or I was really disappointed, take your pick.  He obviously believes that we should all be forced to buy health insurance whether we want to or not.  And he has bought into the President’s promise that we won’t be forced to give up our current coverage, even though the bills as written would force those who lose their coverage because of an employer change onto the government plan.  He said,

But clearly, the president — the goals the president set out I agree with — you know, cover everybody, bend the out-year cost curve, make sure if you have your own insurance you get — and you like it, you get to keep it.

Those three goals are things which I’m 100 percent for, as is the Republican caucus in the Senate.

This is one reason we’re losing the argument while being right on the facts but wrong on the concepts.

By “here,” I mean in the United States for the last year or so.  And I don’t mean to imply that I have an answer.

In the last 12 months, an extremely junior Senator from an extremely leftist and corrupt area of Illinois has been transformed into a savior, rescuing us from the ravages of the Bush Administration.  Nothing he could say was recognized publicly as the sophomoric soporific inanity that it was.  His pronouncements have been self-contradictory and frankly far-fetched, nay unworkable, nay impossibly unattainable.  His campaign promises were so outrageous that they seemed to be beyond contradiction–how does one argue with insanity?  He promised “hope” as if he were a revival preacher, and “change” without saying just what would change, in what direction, and how it would be paid for.  In fact, he promised it would be free!

Yet the Constitutionally protected press didn’t seem to notice.  Not a word of question when he found himself unable to complete  a sentence because his teleprompter was running slower than his mouth.  No lifted eyebrows when he named a well-recognized doofus as his running mate.  Nope, just “Isn’t that amazing!  Out of the box thinking!”  And, “There isn’t a nicer guy in DC than good ol’ Joe.  He even rides the train to work.”

But let’s move on to something more concrete.

He forced through a “stimulus” package and signed it without following any of the campaign promises he’d made regarding publicity for new bills or five days of review on-line.  He claimed it was imperative, to keep unemployment rates below 8%.  It was heavily back-loaded, with little of the appropriated money actually directed at the areas of the economy that could help turn things around fast.  It cost a trillion dollars, yet he didn’t seem to mind that.  “I’ll cut the deficit in half in my first term,” he said.  And the adoring masses didn’t notice that the deficit would still be twice what it was at its highest under the hated Bush Regime, which was fighting two fronts of a foreign war at the time.  Now, unemployment rates are approaching 10% and likely to go higher, while the “extreme emergency stimulus spending package” has only disbursed about 5% of its appropriation after four months of availability.  And the press actually reports that President Obama had “predicted” that jobless rates would skyrocket this way.  They ignore the fact that his prediction was premised on the stimulus package not being passed.

Then he decided to buy both General Motors and Chrysler with borrowed taxpayer money, abrogate the contacts both companies had with their dealers and bond holders, and give their assets to another private company, Fiat (Chrysler), and to the UAW, (GM).  This was to avoid bankruptcy for both firms and “protect American jobs.”  The press barely noticed how the law was being circumvented.  Once the takeover was complete, GM declared bankruptcy anyway.  And President Obama declared that he “had no desire to run an auto company” after naming a “Car Czar” to run the company, who would report directly to the President.  Meanwhile, GM announced that it would be expanding its European operations (not US), and of course Fiat is an Italian company, and not one known for great engineering or marketing acumen.  Oh, yes,

President Obama forced Chrysler into federal bankruptcy protection on Thursday so it could pursue a lifesaving alliance with the Italian automaker Fiat, in yet another extraordinary intervention into private industry by the federal government.–New York Times, 05/01/2009

So much for avoiding bankruptcy, but they did avoid the bankruptcy laws. And all those jobs they were going to save apparently didn’t include the auto dealers they forced out of business.

Next up, Cap and Trade, or Cap and Tax as it’s known in the conservative blogosphere.  It was rushed through the House, again without the promised public review time, in fact without time for Representatives to even read the thing.  It doesn’t do much, if anything, to clean out our air, but it will do plenty to clean out our checking accounts.  Against all the evidence, President Obama touts it as a bill that will actually save us money, even though it will help push us from a known, inexpensive technology (based on a natural resource we have plenty of) into dependence on some pie-in-the-sky technology which nobody even knows is workable, and which today is god-awful expensive.  Major beneficiaries of the bill include some major benefactors of Candidate Obama, such as General Electric.  But I don’t intend to dwell.

Let’s go to the infamous “health care” issue.  We are being told that if we force the 40 million (that’s 40,000,000, accepted common knowledge) people in the US who do not have “health care” (actually, they have no formal health insurance) to buy into government controlled health insurance, their health care will be improved and it will actually cost less (in total) than what the country spends today (in total).  Assuming there are 260 million people in the US who do have health insurance of some kind, that means we can somehow increase the number of people with health insurance by 15%, without reducing the quality or quantity of health care of the original 260 million, while reducing the total cost of it all.

Just think about that.  President Obama is promising us something for nothing.  In fact, he’s promising us something and a rebate.  Now, what did your parents tell you about “something for nothing”?  What about TANSTAAFL?  Didn’t even Bernie Madoff wake anybody up?

The claim is made that the government can run a health insurance plan better and cheaper than can private insurers, because the government “won’t have to be interested in making a profit.”  To bureaucrats, “making a profit” means “squeezing the customers until their eyes pop out.”  To a successful businessman, it means “watching expenses to keep them down, while giving the customer what he wants, and leaving some margin for profit after paying the highest business tax rates in the developed world.”

One way they claim they can do better is by economy of scale (and coercion)–they’ll force doctors and hospitals to take less pay for their work.  Same, I suppose, for other types of medical providers–ambulance services, pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies, makers (and inventors) of medical equipment, and medical researchers.  They don’t say why this won’t gradually force more and more of these providers either out of the business, or out of the US.  There is a shortage of medical doctors already–how will cutting their anticipated pay help recruit more of them?  Oh, yes, they also claim that one reason they have to insinuate themselves into the practice of medicine is to prop up failing local hospitals.  And they plan to do this by cutting reimbursement to those hospitals.  This makes sense to whom????!!!!????!!!!

President Obama’s lackeys appeared everywhere today, I’m sure, trying to overcome the devastating testimony of the CBO this week, that there was no saving in the proposed legislation.  They tried to explain that it’s “deficit neutral” because it’ll save this here, and that there, and the $250 billion over-run (that’s about $1,000 for each legal resident of the US.  The actual cost will be about a trillion dollars over ten years–that’s $1,000,000,000,000, four times the over-run, and a million millions) they aren’t saving because they aren’t going to reduce payments to Medicare after all (or was it Medicaide?) doesn’t count.

Right.  And you and I don’t count either, because we apparently can’t count.  If we could, we’d be burning down buildings in DC to show our outrage at having people in positions of power who seem to believe they can say “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” forever and get away with it, just because they’ve gotten away with it for a year.  And I must mention that of those 40 million “uninsured,” only about 16 million of them will be insured after the trillion dollars has been spent.  That makes it $62,500 per new insuree.

It is literally IMPOSSIBLE for these screwball schemes of President Obama to work.  There is no way for them to work.  Not only that, if they are implemented, things will get worse, not better.  Fewer doctors will have more patients to treat.  More patients will be turned away, and more will be misdiagnosed due to the constraints of time and a reduction in available diagnostic tests.  There will be less innovative use of medicines and technology.  There will be less technology available to work with, as companies will have a higher threshhold to meet for medical equipment R&D to become profitable. The expense of university-based research will fall more and more on the taxpayers’ shoulders as private providers will no longer find it feasible to make the effort.

And private insurers will lose business to the tax-subsidized government plan, as businesses recognize they have to throw their employees off their existing plans to compete with all their competitiors who are doing the same thing.  In time, there will be no affordable private health insurance.  It will be a luxury for the wealthy, if it exists at all.  It will truly be a takeover of the health care sector by the govenment.

Finally, Republicans, do not fall prey to the accusation that you are “absent without permission” in the search for better health services.  Educate yourselves.  Learn the history of medicine.  Almost none of the advances of modern medicine have been made by government-directed practitioners.  Individuals and private companies, perhaps some with government grants, have done the bulk of the work in eradicating many diseases and developing the technologies that are considered necessary for modern diagnostic procedures and treatment.  By protecting the free market approach to medical treatment, you are protecting our access to affordable and available health care.

So, what is going on here?  It’s pretty clear, even to me, that President Obama is telling us that 5 plus 5 equals 4, the moon is made of green cheese, and that there won’t be runaway inflation or onerous tax burdens when he passes his agenda.  And it’s clear that he can’t be correct.

Why isn’t that clear to everybody, including the press that loves him so?

Senator Kyl corrected the record on Sandra Day O’Connor vs. Sonya Sotomayor.  O’Connor said she believed a wise man and a wise woman would come to the same conclusion.  Sotomayor said she thought a Latina would come to a better decision than a white man.  That implies a different conclusion.  That implies she thinks a Latina thinks better than a white man does.  Kyl caught the distinction, but in my opinion, didn’t stress it strongly enough.

They are also getting tied up in a red herring of how this has not apparently affected her prior decisions.  The point should be that it is a racist point of view–one ethnic group thinks better than another one does.

He may have also caught the fact that she misquoted O’Connor in her previous answer.  I can’t go into it here, because I just don’t have the transcript.  But in effect, she earlier misquoted O’Connor to imply that O’Connor had claimed a woman would make a smarter decision than would a man.

Paddy Leahy called a quick recess so Chuckie Schumer could put together a review of SoSo cases that show how “fair” she is.

Schumer is now in the process of redefining “empathy.”

————-

Update:  I found the video of SoSo’s evasion to Senator Sessions regarding her take on Justice O’Connor’s statement that “a wise old man should reach the same decison as a wise old woman.”  Quoting SoSo,

I knew that Justice O’Connor couldn’t have meant that if judges reached different conclusions, legal conclusions, that one of them wasn’t wise.

Well, duh!  Of course it wasn’t what she meant.  It wasn’t what she said.  This is artless evasion, plain and simple.  To think that “a wise Latina will reach better decisions than a white man” is a parallel or even contrasting idea as a way of agreement is nonsense.

It’s time to call her on this, again.  Perhaps Senator Cornyn will do so tomorrow.

Starting with the Presidential election of 2004, a recurring claim of the Democrat Party has been that calm, rational, reasonable leadership by a Democrat President will bring the leaders and the people of the rest of the world, and particularly of Europe, to join with us in our fight against evil in the world.  According to Democrats, we haven’t had much international support because nobody liked George W. Bush.  With John Kerry or John Edwards Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as the person in charge in the US, world leaders would fall in line behind us if we called for action on the world stage.  The change would be phenomenal.  Where Bush had to beg and talk and explain and assure and send his Secretary of State to speak to the United Nations just to get a “coalition of the willing” to help us liberate Iraq (30 to 45 countries, depending on their level of assistance, according to Colin Powell in 2003), Kerry or Hillary or Obama would only need to ask in order to receive all the help (s)he would want.

Obama came into office with the knowledge that Iran and North Korea both have the potential to be bigger problems than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, and that Afghanistan and Pakistan were likely to get worse before they got better, perhaps far worse.  He assured us, by his participation in the electoral process, that he was capable of managing these situations successfully, even of solving them completely.  There was an unspoken implication that his Democratic charisma would serve us well in getting other countries to support our initiatives.

So what is going on behind the Oval Office curtain?  If President Obama is living up to his promises, he has been working  behind the scenes to line up that support.  He has had Secretary Clinton meeting with foreign leaders to solidify their solidarity.  He has had former President Clinton playing golf in Presidential twosomes on President-only courses around the world.  He has had Senator Kerry windsurfing with Prime Ministers on beaches from Martha’s Vineyard to Majorca.  He’s sent Vice President Biden (sans press corps) to speak at every school for the deaf in Antarctica.  And what have they all been discussing around the globe?

If he’s serious about his responsibilities, these emissaries have been convincing dozens, nay hundreds, of world leaders that they must step up and step into Iraq and Afghanistan to take our place when we have to pull our troops out in order to solve the Iranian or North Korean nuclear crises when they erupt.  The Democrat Party has assured us for eight years that this was the kind of thing that a Democrat would do so much better than a Republican could.  And judging by Obama’s successful campaign swing through Europe last summer, it appeared that they were right.

So thank you, Barack Obama, for protecting world peace by insuring that the rest of the world will march in lockstep behind us when we save them once again from their own failings.  I know you can’t admit that these diplomatic missions are actually taking place, but I’m sure that you aren’t wasting the time leading up to the next (first) nuclear showdown since the Cuban Missile Crisis on government-paid campaign junkets to support some hack Senator.  As the most intelligent President since President Clinton, you are working as hard as you can to make sure that we are not alone when the time comes.

I’m choosing to ignore the fact that you haven’t been able to get any Guantanamo prisoners placed anywhere in the world except for the one, in France.  You obviously must have had some Republicans leading the missions to look for that support.  So don’t fail me.  Show us that Democrats were right when they told us that any of you could charm the battalions right out of Europe.  We’re going to need them, and soon.

Dr. Sowell discussed his new book, The Housing Boom and Bust, with Sean Hannity on Wednesday night.  Regarding the blame for the current economic condition, he said

There’s a lot of blame to go around, but what’s crucial… is that the mortgage payments stopped coming in, and so whoever created a situation where people were given mortgages that they weren’t able to pay, that’s who I would blame, and that would be the regulators.  We keep hearing that all of this came about because there wasn’t enough regulation.  No, it was precisely the regulators who forced the banks to lend to meet government set quotas… and that’s what made the mortgage market so risky.  Now things happened in Wall Street and elsewhere that added to the risk, but… if the money had kept coming in from the mortgage payments, the risk wouldn’t have been there….

Among other things, they [the Clinton Administration and Congress at the time] certainly gave a quota to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as to how many loans of a certain kind they had to make.  And that in turn meant that the original lenders, the banks, the mortgage companies, could lend to anybody, no matter how risky it was, sell the mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the banks get their money up front, and the problems become Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s problem.  Which in turn means it becomes the taxpayers’ problem….

This is a bigger mortgage crisis than we’ve ever faced before; it is not the first.  Republicans pushed the same idea in the twenties, Democrats in the thirties, both of them in the forties and fifties; every time it lead to large foreclosures.

This is generally the same analysis that’s been made by conservatives since the crisis first arose.  It’s nice to know there is a real economist making the case based on data and research, rather than on logic and common sense alone.

This isn’t the result of a failure of the free market system; it’s a result of governmental interference with that system.  By forcing the market down the path of making bad loans, Congress has pushed us into perilous times.

Niaive.

Humorless.

Incompetent.

Shrewd.

Intelligent.

Inexperienced.

Indecisive.

Opportunistic.

And now, Newt Gingrich has said of his policies regarding treatment of terrorist prisoners, trial of these prisoners, release of these same prisoners after or before trial, and handling of the Somali pirate after his capture, “This, I think, verges on insanity.”  Fox News Sunday, 5/10/09.

Although I have said it previously, he said it better.

Let’s just trade her to the liberals.  Based on the column she published yesterday on Town Hall as “Torture by Another Name,” and again today in The Arizona Republic as “By defining torture, we define ourselves” (there are some stylistic differences between the two columns), she thinks like they do.  Like any liberal, she started with her conclusion, then she assembled the “evidence” she wanted to support it.  Her premise is introduced by the following exchange:

Several years ago, I asked a veteran journalist for advice.

“I’m trying to figure out if I have an ethical conflict,” I began.

“If you have to ask, you do,” he said.

Simple as that. In posing a question, we often reveal the answer.

Apply the same construct to torture. If we have to ask, it probably is.

Actually, it isn’t that simple.  In the case of, “How much does that yacht cost?” the answer may well be, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it,” but not in the case she wants to consider.  I could assert with as much logic that “if you have to ask, it probably isn’t.”

Her argument continues:

Bush administration lawyers tortured the English language trying to justify the unjustifiable.

“Enhanced interrogation” wasn’t really torture, they decided, as long as the pain administered didn’t result in “death, organ failure, or serious impairment of bodily functions.”

By that definition, waterboarding — the simulated drowning technique favored by Inquisitors ferreting out heretics — wasn’t torture. People might feel like they were going to die, but they weren’t really, and so …

Her ellipsis implies that they were wrong, but were they?  That is the question, and her preconceived notion that they were doesn’t make it so.

The rest of her article continues with similar mush-brained illogic, including appropriating partial quotes from Lindsey Graham and Alan Dershowitz.  In all of them she applies her expressed conclusion that waterboarding is torture, so no further analysis of the question is necessary.  But what happens if we entertain the possibility that waterboarding and the other enhanced techniques may not be torture?

Then, her quotes take on a different hue.  Graham:

Either we’re going to use torture or we’re not. And when you say, we won’t use torture, unless we think we really, really need it (then) we’re not a rule-of-law nation.

Notice that he is speaking about torture in general.  And Graham is definitely (at that time, anyway) one of those people who agree with Parker that waterboarding is torture.  But if he is wrong his comments still stand, they just don’t apply to the current dispute.

Yet, his concern is not with defining torture, it’s with the need to abide by laws, not the situational whims of men.  To me, that requires that torture be defined by more than “If you have to ask, it’s torture.”  It also means that to ask the question is to try to find the line beyond which you may not go, but within which your actions are legal and ethical and even moral.  It also implies that laws can be written which erase even that line, such as a law authorizing the President to take any measure necessary to protect the United States from attack under cerain circumstances.

Or, it implies that Graham would allow thousands to die in exchange for upholding a principle.  It’s OK for him to believe that, but he should at least acknowledge that that is his position.  And so should Parker.

But in the same interview, Graham says

Every military lawyer I’ve ever met believes that this is vital for the safety of our troops …. I can give you dozens of example of cases involving captured Americans where abuse stopped at a certain point because the people doing it were afraid of being prosecuted as a war criminal … During the Somalia conflict, they had one of our helicopter pilots. We dropped leaflets all over Mogadishu telling everybody, all the militia people, that we were watching, and that anybody who abuses this person will be a war criminal and we will come after you …

At this point I have to ask, “How much good did that do?”  Who knows?  And those people weren’t engaging in torture, anyway.  It was murder, plain and simple.

Let’s do it this way, Kathleen.  Let’s define what torture is, then ask if a given technique meets that criteria.  Let’s not just say, “If we have to ask, it probably is–or isn’t.”

On Fox News Sunday today, Senator Carl Levin, never a moderate Democrat, called again for a “independent” investigation into something about the interrogation memos.  I say “something about,” because it’s far from clear just what needs to be investigated there, but that’s not my objective.  My objective is to tear apart Levin’s words and illuminate their hidden implications.

He said he believes, “There ought to be accountability, but how that is done, should be done by an independent person, not by elected politicians such as me or anybody else.” He was speaking at the time about Abu Ghraib (still asserting tht what went on there was policy), but he later applied it to any individual or event, including the memos and CIA interrogations.

Unfortunately, Levin seems to believe that this independent person is found in the the Justice Departement, or that he can be found elsewhere to make “independent” recommendations to the DOJ.  I didn’t notice if he used the term “independent counsel,” but he could have.  But where does this leave us?

It leaves us with the prospect of an unaccountable individual, picked by somebody (Eric Holder, perhaps?), being selected to investigate something, anything, and then given the power to recommend prosecution or not.  But unless this is more than a recommendation, the Attorney General or President still has to make the final decision.

Why bother with the intermediary?  Let the people who have been charged with the authority of being “the deciders” make all the decisions.  They can then be held responsible by the public if they overstep their authority or the bounds of decency.  As pointed out by Senator Kit Bond on the same show, “We [the Congress] have oversight to object at the time if we think they are wrong.” In other words, the responsibility to prevent Executive abuses in national security matters lies with the Congress to do so before the fact. This is a political role, and it’s a proper one for the Congress.  Congress’s role is not to just sit back and comment on the passing scene.  (Leave that role to us.)

While the idea of an independent prosecutor is enticing, what does it imply about our system of government?  It implies that our elected officials can’t be trusted to do the right thing, rather than the politically expedient thing.  Yet it also implies that these same untrustworthy politicians can be trusted to select an independent investigator to do their work for them, and do it right.  In fact, this sometimes happens.  Other times, we get a Patrick Fitzgerald who has his own agenda which happens to be the opposite of what might have been the agenda of his selector.  As we found out in the Whitewater investigations, these prosecutors can find plenty to prosecute.  We also found out there that if the President doesn’t want the investigation to follow certain trails, he can have his Attorney General deny permission to continue down those roads, putting the lie to the idea of true “independence.”

So the idea of an “independent” investigator is actually just a false ideal, something out of comic books, like Superman or Batman or ___________ (insert name of your favorite fictional hero).  In real life, we’re better served if political actions (and an investigation into CIA interrogations is nothing if it isn’t political) are taken by political actors, people who can be held accountable by the public for those actions.

The public can determine if a prosecution is politically motivated, and even if an investigation is politically motivated.  It’s really pretty easy.  Watch both sides.  If they are divided along party lines, the issue probably is partisan politics and it doesn’t belong in civil or criminal court.  (How this might affect possible prosecution of Congressman William Jefferson, I’m not sure, but he simply isn’t that important any more).  If the majority side is bi-partisan, there may be more merit to the question.

Of course, this discussion is muddied by the fact that there is very little in government that isn’t partisan politics any more.  Years of liberal Senatorial control over judicial placements has insured that even some courts are partisan in outlook and behavior.  And amazingly enough, federal courts are another area where there is no public oversight of their behavior.  Still, the more accountability that falls on the shoulders of elected officials, the better.  And accountability is exactly what people like Carl Levin are trying to avoid.

It is the responsibility of the President to see that the laws of the US are enforced.  (Good for a chuckle, right, but still true).  The Attorney General and the DOJ are his right arm in this regard.  If the Congress believes the President is not doing his job, it’s their responsibility to take the action they think is necessary and appropriate.  The have that authority.  To try to foist it off on an extra-governmental player, someone who is not answerable to the public, is simply irresponsible on their part.  To try to convince us that it’s somehow better to make the process “independent” is in fact an attempt to whitewash the institutionalization of partisan witch hunts.

In the real world of laws, sanity, and reason, there cannot be any court proceedings against the advisers of President Bush.  I am not a lawyer, but I believe my reasons for this conclusion will stand up.

First, before there should even be any investigation, there has to be some evidence, at least some indication that a law has been broken.  Where is that indication?  If I’m correct here, that should be the end of the legal case, if not the constant stream of accusations and innuendo.

Second, and maybe this is redundant, there has to be some law to be broken.  For a law to be broken, somebody has to take action to break it.  What actions did the Bush advisers take?  They wrote legal opinions.  Since that happens millions of times every day, and hundreds or thousands of times during the course of any administration, that can’t be an infraction of the law.  Writing opinions about legal questions is not a crime.

What else could they have done wrong?  The only thing left is the content of their opinions.  At this point, my own opinion is that there can be no prosecution of these lawyers based solely on what their opinions are.  To argue otherwise is to ignore the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, which if nothing else is primarily intended to protect political opinion, and in this case the legal opinions are only being questioned because of the political situation surrounding them.  Only the accusers of President Bush’s men refuse to acknowledge that the questions being analyzed were complex and open to many interpretations, the exact situation under which legal opinions are normally sought.

I rest my case.  If the action the lawyers took was not illegal in itself, and if the content of their opinions are protected speech and therefore not criminal, there is no crime to prosecute.

Beyond that, the argument that they recommended a course of behavior that violates the Geneva Convention, a treaty, holds no water either.  Treaties are made between nations, not individuals, so individuals can’t be said to have broken some law even if as a distant result someone else does something that might be considered to have violated the terms of the treaty.

Even Presidents don’t break the law if they order an action that violates a treaty.  Their first allegiance is to the country, not to the treaty.  (Barack Obama announced during his campaign that he intended to invade Pakistan if they didn’t accede to his wishes regarding the search for bin Laden.  That would be a violation of more than one international agreement if it happens.)  If a treaty is broken, the nation, and only the nation, can be punished, such as by boycotts, embargoes, travel and trade restrictions, or even invasion and war.  Individual actions leading to the treaty violation must themselves be illegal to merit individual legal action in their wake.

Where does that leave this whole thing?  Nowhere.  It will either drag on as a distraction and red meat for the left wing, to end in no case being brought but maximum bad publicity for the “wrong” side, or we’ll travel through the looking-glass, where we’ll find Nancy Pelosi as the Red Queen of Hearts, Pat Leahy as the Mad Hatter, Harry Reid as the March Hare, and a bemused Barack Obama as the King of Hearts/Alice (we can only hope).  Robert Byrd will make a cameo appearance as the Mock Turtle, Barney Frank as the Dormouse, and Chuck Schumer appears as the Cheshire Cat.  Anybody interested in filling out the entire cast of characters may look here for memory jogging purposes–I got carried away because of the many apt parallels:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/alice/characters.html

Back to serious analysis.  The left is obsessed with the desire to convince the world that President Bush condoned and ordered “torture.”  It’s clear that the exercise is intended, at the very least, to discredit President Bush and his administration.  The lunatic left would be thrilled with an attempt to prosecute the former President for allowing interrogation techniques that the left deems illegal.

Furthermore, if the former President is accused and convicted of ordering violations of human rights (torture) against anybody, the individuals who actually carried out the acts cannot escape investigation and prosecution.  It has been well established that “only following orders” is not a defense for crimes of this magnitude.  The Boy President has again gotten in “over his pay grade.”  If he lets this go too far, he won’t be able to turn back, and we could all suffer for it.  We must hope that he follows the White Rabbit, Eric Holder, back up out of the rabbit hole.

I’m not referring to the obvious stupidity of revealing our internal reasoning on this subject to our enemies.  Nor do I mean the obvious stupidity of a President who has now told his advisers that “whatever you tell me may be revealed to the public someday by a future President.  Some future Congress or DOJ might decide that your advice constituted illegal incitement to commit crimes against humanity.  They might prosecute you, but I won’t, I promise.  Now, what was it you wanted to tell me?”

No, I mean that what is REALLY wrong is that nothing was gained by the United States when these details were revealed. So far, only Brit Hume has noticed this.  I’d like to go a bit farther than just the question of what was gained?-nothing-and look at why the memos were released, assuming that somebody thought something would be gained or they wouldn’t have released them.

Let’s start with the person who made that decision.  That is, of course, Barack Obama.  He went against the advice of all living CIA Directors, including his own, when he declassified those memos.  As near as I can determine, the only reason he’s given for doing so is that it will make us all safer because the rest of the world will now know that we, as a country, won’t do the activities discussed in the memos.  But why did the memos themselves have to be revealed to achieve this dubious goal?  Couldn’t he have done as well by simply stating that “We don’t torture.  Period.  And by that I mean we don’t do the following,” and list whatever he wants to.  Wouldn’t that have achieved the same thing, without giving up any Executive Privilege, and without exposing past, present, and future advisers to unnecessary scrutiny for simply giving the President advice?  The answer is, obviously, yes, it would have had the same result.  This means that his given reason doesn’t hold water any better than an al Qaida terrorist after a serious interrogation.

So what is the REAL motive for Obama?  It has to be a strong one for him to go against the advice of his own CIA drector, Leon Panetta.  What does logic tell us it is?  It tells us that Obama’s gigantic ego and inferiority complex has overruled Panetta’s brain.

Inferiority complex?  How is that possible?  Isn’t he the greatest President ever, even smarter than Hillary Clinton, who is the smartest woman in the world?  Well, no, and his decisions make that apparent.  But he may well be the most arrogant President ever.

Forget about what he’s said while campaigning; think about what he and his surrogates say and do every day. One of their bad habits is to make it clear that anything bad that happens is left over from the Bush administration, it isn’t Obama’s fault.  In fact, nothing is Obama’s fault.  They even do it when it makes no sense at all, about trivial things.  They are obsessed with avoiding blame for anything.  That is his gigantic ego running amok.

More importantly, this President is obsessed with proving that he’s better than George W. Bush.  The policies of the Bush administration are always the “failed policies of the Bush administration” when Obama speaks about them.  We don’t just reject torture, we “no longer tolerate torture during the interrogation of prisoners,” leaving he clear implication that torture was approved under the Bush administration.  Guantanamo Bay Prison isn’t just the best facility we have for holding prisoners captured during the war on terror and al Qaida, it’s a “disgraceful blot on our national honor, which I promise we’ll close ASAP.”  (OK, I can’t find that quote, but I’m close.)  Statements and actions like those are a pretty good indicator of severe feelings of inferiority.  When you constantly have to prove you’re better than somebody else, it’s clear that you don’t believe it yourself.

Now the picture emerges.  Our country gains nothing by the release of the memos, but Barack Obama gets to give himself a big pat on the back for not only not being Bush, he shows us just how bad Bush was, because Bush had advisers who didn’t think waterboarding and other rough tactics were OK when dealing with these prisoners.  Bush really was the Devil; Hugo Chavez was right.  That makes Obama so much better than Bush it isn’t even a matter for discussion.

It’s terrible to have to say it, but it’s terrible behavior on the part of Obama–he released those memos for the same reason he does everything else, for self-promotion purposes.  By trashing Bush, he makes himself look better.  His inferiority complex required it, and his ego told him that it would be OK, no matter what Panetta and the others told him.  And before you say, “Aw, shucks, he couldn’t be that bad,” think about this:  Any other plausible reason is even worse, involving a lack of concern for the fate of his country or an abdication of his decision-making authority to one of his less patriotic advisers, perhaps one who has already admitted performing violent acts against the Government in the past.  Such a person would likely have no compunction about damaging his country, even if his “friend” Obama is now President.

The sow’s ear in question is the decision that is either coming or has already been made to convert millions or billions of dollars worth of the preferred stock of eight “rescued” banks into common stock.  The explanation given is that it will improve the banks’ operating ratios, and thus do more good than keeping the preferred stock will.  The reason this isn’t a silk purse already is that it also means the US Government will have massively expanded voting rights as a result of the exchange.  The Government will even end up with voting control of some banks.  This will mean, in fact, that those banks will be nationalized banks, controlled by the Government.  We as a nation will be in the banking business.

To briefly list the problems with a nationalized banking industry:  Unfair competition against the non-nationalized banks.  Certain voting groups will receive preferential treatment from the Government bank, giving them an unfair advantage over their competitors for loans and services.  Employees of these banks will now depend upon their Government-employed Managers for their employment.  The whole banking system will be out-of-balance, with the big thumb of the Government on the scale.  For more, read Thomas Sowell.

These problems, spread more generally, were among those I wrote about years ago in the discussion of mini-privatization of the Social Security system.  The direct purchase of stocks on the open market by the Government on behalf of Social Security would be unacceptable for those reasons and more.  Centralized decisions would mean Government favoritism, picking winners and losers in some cases.  Therefore, I argued that the mini-privatization would have to be accomplished using individual accounts, where private citizens could make their own buy and sell decisions, or through index funds, where no government official would be making any decision that resulted in funds being directed towards one company rather than another.

So this brings me to the silk purse.  If/when this conversion to common stock happens, the stock should be deposited into the Social Security Trust Fund, redeeming some of the special SocSec bonds that it now holds.  Then, it should be allocated to a sub-account within that trust, which allocates the entire pool of stock among all working Social Security account holders (I don’t know exactly how to do this, but I can envision something like a mutual fund holding just these 8 stocks–the allocation would be the hard part).  This would put the voting rights into the hands of private citizens and out of the clutches of political appointees.  It would require an act of Congress, maybe more than one.  Of course it wouldn’t be easy.

The advantages are obvious.  The Government stays out of the banking business, and the Social Security Trust Fund will be on track towards a solvency solution that doesn’t involve reduced benefits or higher taxes.

I have no illusions that anything like this will happen.  I don’t expect that it will be discussed in public.  I don’t even know for sure that I haven’t overlooked a big problem with it that would make it impossible.  But the fact that I can see it as a possibility, yet the people running things won’t even consider it if they do acknowledge the idea, makes me feel about as bad as anything else does these days.

Without boring you with the details of why I believe these to be factual, I’ll just give you the list.

There is only one way the expense of this bill can ever be paid.  Inflation.  We are facing massive inflation at some point down the road if this bill passes as it stands now.  Just think about Social Security.  We’ve been fretting over how to fund it for years.  This bill dwarfs Social Security.

That one point is far more important than the rest, but they follow.

“Act in haste, repent at leisure.”  By hastily ramming this bill through, there has been little or no opportunity for a true analysis of what it says and what it will do.

The situation is the result of governmental meddling in the free market.  Fannie Mae.  Freddie Mac.  Artificially low interest rates for bad risks.

The whole thing could have been mitigated by declaring a moratorium on the mark-to-market rule.

It isn’t impossible to place appropriate values on the dreaded mortgage-backed securities, it’s just difficult.  It might not even be that hard.

The Government has no ability to make sensible business decisions for banks or car manufacturers or any other industry.  And “assisting” one company automatically disadvantages its competitors.

It’s as important economically for bad businesses to fail as it is for good ones to succeed.

For a “tax cut” to work as a stimulus it has to be permanent.  Otherwise, it does nothing to engender confidence in the future.

A reduction of the top income tax rate to 25% with other rates commensurately lower would solve the current problem better than anything that been proposed so far (OK, that’s just my opinion).

Any part of the bill that doesn’t inject money directly into the pockets of consumers or producers is not stimulus.  The fact that so much of it’s there is shameful.

Spending on projects alone is not only not enough, it doesn’t really help much, because the jobs aren’t permanent.  And much of that money may well end up in Mexico.

President Obama either knows less about economics than many of us here, or he really doesn’t care what he does to the economy or to the country.

The popular press has no interest in reporting, but great interest in cheerleading.  They’ve abdicated their prime responsibility.

Bailing out California makes even less sense than bailing out GM and Chrysler.  Nobody forced California to enact laws and policies guaranteed to cost more than the state could afford.

The current bill re-enacts the policies of the 1930’s, which only lengthened the depression.

President Obama tonight invoked the “lost decade” of the 90’s in Japan, without realizing he is urging us to follow in their footsteps.

The auto executives appear before Congress soon.  Which among them will fly to the meeting, and which will hitchhike?  “We’re sorry, Mr. Chairman, but Chrysler Chairman Smith hasn’t arrived.  He’s still trying to get a ride on I-95.  He wasn’t about to waste money on more expensive transportation.”  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that.)