On Friday, the BBC posted an article entitled, “What happened to global warming?”  The article states that for the past eleven years there has been no increase in global temperatures.  During that time carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise.  This contradicts the climate models some scientists have used to predict future climate changes.

In a related story at Watts Up With That, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has sent out a press release saying that scientists from across the country have successfully found a way to incorporate the nitrogen cycle into climate change predictions.  I have no idea what the science here is, but what this means to me is that scientists are still learning in their predictions of climate change.

There is currently a total lack of agreement on what the trends in temperature will be over the coming years.  Some scientists predict global warming, some predict global cooling.  Generally speaking, the jury is still out.  Keeping this in mind, it might be a good idea for the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to move cautiously to combat ‘global warming’ rather than taking drastic action to solve a problem that may not exist.

According to yesterday’s The Hill, the Senate Finance Committee will be voting on healthcare reform today.  As this goes forward, I would like to reference an article that appeared Sunday in the Boston Globe stating what is happening with healthcare reform in Massachusetts.

In 2006 Massachusetts enacted healthcare reform.  The bill required everyone in the state to have health insurance, penalized people for not having it, and provided state plans for those who could not afford private insurance.  Sound familiar?

The article in the Boston Globe is an update on how that plan is working.  Because the costs of this plan have been so high, the state is planning to shake up how providers are paid in order to reduce the cost of the plan.  The plan is to keep patients in a defined provider network, or direct them to lower-cost hospitals.  Currently more than 40 percent of hospital care is provided in expensive academic medical centers and where many insurance policies allow patients access to large numbers of providers.

The article points out:

“A state commission recommended in July that insurers largely scrap the current fee-for-service system – in which insurers pay doctors, hospitals, and other providers a negotiated fee for each procedure and visit – and instead pay providers a per-patient annual fee to cover all of the patient’s medical care.”

“…Under a global payment system, doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers would form large networks, called accountable care organizations, that would provide most of the care for individual patients and divvy up the payments. Doctors would try to coordinate patients’ care within these networks, which would share electronic medical records and treatment plans. And to manage costs, they would try to direct patients to the hospital within the network that could provide good-quality care at the lowest cost, while generally using teaching hospitals for advanced care.” 

What these ideas show is that a state is not designed to finance, provide, or manage the healthcare of its residents.  Some businesses work better in the private sector.

If you truly want to cut the cost of healthcare and reduce its impact on the federal deficit, tort reform will do that.  The Congressional Budget Office wrote a letter to Orrin Hatch on October 9, 2009, explaining the impact tort reform would have on medical expenses in this country.  Please read the letter.  The CBO estimates that tort reform would reduce the federal deficit $54 billion over the next ten years.  It seems to me that the way forward is tort reform, not the creation of a federally-funded healthcare nightmare.

According to the blog briefing room at The Hill, healthcare reform could cost as much as $4,000 a year in higher premiums for every family.  This has to do with the concept of the risk pool.  Unless the penalty for not having insurance is increased to the point where everyone will have insurance, the risk pool will not be large enough to finance the program.

Just a few notes, I live in Massachusetts where we have a state healthcare program that does require all people in the state to have health insurance.  There have been more than a few problems with the program.  First of all, it has cost far more than was ever predicted.  It has reached the point where hospitals were not being reimbursed in a timely fashion because the state did not have the money–the hospitals were forced to wait until the beginning on the state’s fiscal year to get paid.  That doesn’t solve the problem of excessive cost–it simply pushes it off until the next year.  There are also people who had basic healthcare coverage–they paid out of pocket for routine doctor’s visits but were covered in case of accident or serious illness.  Many of these people were told that their policies did not qualify under the state’s insurance requirements–they had to get more expensive policies that covered routine doctor’s visits.  They were forced to pay significantly more in insurance premiums.  Again, this has to do with increasing the risk pool–by requiring all people to carry extensive health insurance, even if they are happy with basic coverage, you increase the amount of money in the system and theoretically everyone pays less.  It’s a great idea, but it doesn’t always work that way.

The bill Congress is voting on Tuesday is a bad bill.  It needs to be scrapped and rewritten to include tort reform and portability of health insurance across state lines.  Those are the changes that will benefit all of us–not just a few well-connected states. 

Robert Knight at Townhall.com posted an article today on the current progress of healthcare legislation.  The gyrations the Democrat Congress is going through to pass this bill are amazing.  I’m not sure they are constitutional, and if they are constitutional, they are outrageous.

The text of the Max Baucus bill has been kept secret.  No one knows what is actually in it!  Yet, Congress is voting on it. 

According to the article:

“Bits and pieces are leaking out, but entire sections will be added later. That’s what happened with the House version. Nobody read the bill, and 75 “phantom” amendments were added after the vote. A similar maneuver happened in the Senate when a key committee approved another version of a sweeping health care bill in July without seeing the text. Actual language was unveiled months later in September.”

The bill includes such wonders as:

Increasing taxes by creating higher levels in order for itemized expenses to be deducted.

Exempting Congress from the mandatory coverage provision.

Taxing Class II medical devices.

Different tax rates for people in different states.  Oddly enough, the federal government is covering the increased cost of Medicare in Nevada and several other states for the next five years–other states will have to pay for the increase themselves.

Newsbusters posted an article on how Harry Reid plans to get this bill passed.  There is also an article at CNSnews explaining how the bill could be passed and signed within the week.  This is not good news for the country.

According to John Hinderaker Power Line today, politics has invaded the National Football League Players’ Union.  The union’s executive director, DeMaurice Smith, on Saturday made a move to solidify the union against a bid by conservative talk show radio host Rush Limbaugh as part of a group that aims to purchase the St. Louis Rams. 

According to the article:

“In an e-mail to the union’s executive committee on Saturday specifically addressing Limbaugh’s bid, Smith said, “I’ve spoken to the Commissioner [Roger Goodell] and I understand that this ownership consideration is in the early stages. But sport in America is at its best when it unifies, gives all of us reason to cheer, and when it transcends. Our sport does exactly that when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred.””

What in the world does he mean?  Doesn’t Rush Limbaugh have a right to be part owner of a football team if he has the money?  Is this discrimination?  Just because Rush Limbaugh is a Conservative icon?   I hope cooler heads prevail.  This is just wrong.  It used to be ok in this country to have an opinion different from the ‘majority’ or different from the ‘people who control the media’.  Have we reached the point where being an outspoken Conservative will result in being denied basic freedom to do business as you please (within the law, of course)?  Is this a hate crime?

Today’s Washington Times reported that the Dalai Lama has ended his visit to Washington, D. C.  He gave a lecture at American University, dropped by a prominent synagogue for the last day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, he visited the grave of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, visited with Chinese-Americans, congressional aides, had a closed meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and with the State Department’s special coordinator for Tibetan issues, and ended with a lunch Saturday at the home of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat.  But he never met with President Obama.

According to the article:

“Although President Obama declined to meet with the Dalai Lama because of his upcoming visit to China next month, the Buddhist leader sent him a letter of congratulations Friday for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The Dalai Lama was awarded the same prize in 1989.

“Ms. Saunders said plans are to have the Dalai Lama return to Washington in December to meet with President Obama.”

I am embarrassed that our President chose not to meet with the Dalai Lama because he didn’t want to upset China.  The last time I checked, the Dalai Lama was a force for peace and freedom–China is neither.  This is another example of being on the wrong side of the equation.  President Obama has dissed Britain, Poland, the Czech Republic, Israel, and the constitution of Honduras while cozying up to Iran, Venezuela, China, and a friend of Hugo Chavez who wants to be president of Honduras for life.  This is ridiculous!

Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online posted an article Friday commenting on the fact that CNN felt it necessary to fact check a Saturday Night Live skit regarding President Obama’s accomplisments in office.  Huh?

The skit had a fake President Obama listing his accomplishments as ‘jack’ and ‘squat’.  It was a funny skit.  CNN chose to fact check the skit on Wolf Blitzer’s,Situation Room.  Why?  Were the skits depicting Sarah Palin as an idiot every fact checked on CNN?  What about the skits involving George Bush or Bill Clinton (or my favorite–the Halloween skit involving Hillary, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and John Edwards (Halloween 2007). 

The double standard involved in news coverage and now even in humor is ridiculous.  It’s time for everyone to back up, take a deep breath, and make an honest effort to be fair.  Is it possible?

Yesterday at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey posted an article explaining how much money would be saved in healthcare costs by instituting tort reform. 

According to the article:

“According to CBO director Douglas Elmendorf on his blog, the CBO studied the impact of both the reduced cost of litigation and the elimination of defensive medicine that would result with tort reform.  Elmendorf says that tort reform would reduce the federal deficit $54 billion over the next ten years, more than the fee Baucus plans to charge insurers for the privilege of existence (via MarySue at Ruby Slippers).

“…That figure includes savings of roughly $41 billion from Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, as well as an increase in tax revenues of roughly $13 billion from a reduction in private health care costs that would lead to higher taxable wages.”

This makes more sense than scrapping the best healthcare system in the world for eleven hundred pages of legal gobbletygook.  Tort reform is not in any of the packages currently under consideration by Congress.  I hope at some point it will be considered.

Larry Kudlow posted an article at National Review yesterday with his ideas on how to strengthen the dollar.  He lists the solutions that have historically been used to strengthen the dollar.  A stable dollar will stop inflationary pressures.  He also points out that in the past, lower taxes have resulted in economic growth and lower unemployment.  We also need to cut government spending.

He states in the article:

“Put simply, the Mundell-Laffer model exercises monetary restraint to save the dollar — and low marginal tax rates for economic-growth incentives that benefit investors, risk takers, small businesses, and workers. Right now, for therapy, the Fed should begin moving excess cash from the economy, and they should raise their target rate. Take a page from the Reserve Bank of Australia’s playbook and move rates higher.

“In addition, the Treasury ought to get out there and buy these unwanted dollars in the marketplace. Just go out there and bid for them. And they need to stop printing so much debt from Congress. All this massive spending and borrowing is killing us. We need to be slashing tax rates on large and small businesses. There’s just no better place to begin job creation. And leave the Bush tax cuts in place, for heaven’s sake.”

If we do not cut federal spending and the tax burden on Americans in the very near future, we will not have an economy to save.

The Times Online is reporting the arrest of a 32-year old man and his 25-year old brother on charges of providing a list of terrorist targets to North African Islamic radicals.  The 32-year old is said to have worked for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland.  He was arrested by French secret service agents.

According to the article:

“Agents were said to have intercepted messages in which the physicist, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, had suggested targets in France.

“He is believed to have been in contact with members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian-based terror organisation that joined Osama bin Laden’s network in 2007.”

We are being very naive if we believe the activities of this man are an incident rather than an indication of a pattern.  For whatever reason, there is a group of people in the world who believe that killing people in order to set up a world-wide caliphate is a worthwhile pursuit.  Now is not the time to go wobbly on the war on terror.

This article is from a news source I am not familiar with.  I am linking it because I think it is important as an illustration of what happens when no one is willing to take a stand against evil.  Y Net News reported yesterday that in an interview given by former Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh to the Sunday Times, Mr. Sneh stated that if Iran were not further sanctioned by this Christmas Israel would attack the country.  I am not necessarily convinced that sanctions will work, but I at least it would be some action against a country whose leader has consistently threatened to annihilate Israel.

The article states:

“Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, sent a letter of protest to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moonin which he wrote that “there is no explanation for Israel’s continuing threats against Tehran”.”  

Knowing the UN, they will probably sanction Israel.  It’s easier.  Israel right now has fewer friends in the world to defend it, fewer people who fear it, and no oil to use as a weapon.

This is what happens when there is no ‘policeman’ in the world and the United States is seen as weak.  President Obama’s dream of a world without nuclear weapons is a wonderful ideal, but if you think about it, even before we had nuclear weapons, we had wars.  The problem is not the weapons, the problem is us–men (and women).  There will always be bullies among us, and there will always be a need to deal with them.  There will always be those who want to take away the freedom of others and be in control of everything.  I believe that the UN was originally set up to be a force for freedom and a deterrent to war.  I also believe they have strayed so far from that intention, that they should be dissolved immediately.

I do not believe the United States will defend Israel if it tries to defend itself against Iranian nukes.  They will let Israel fight alone.  That is how we are treating our allies under this administration.

In reply to Iran’s claims of continuing threats against it by Israel, I offer the following quotes:

“Israel must be wiped off the map.”–Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, October 26, 2005,  Cited in “Ahmadinejad:  The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader” by Kasta Naji, page 31. 

“”Ahmadinejad Says Israel Will Soon Disappear,” Agence-France-Presse, June 2, 2008.

“God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism”–Ahmadinejad, October 26, 2005,  Cited in “The Iran Threat:  President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis” by Alireza Jafarzadeh. page 25.

You get the picture.  There is a pattern here, and it is not Israel threatening Iran.  It is against the UN Charter for one member nation to threaten another, and Iran has been doing that without consequences.  Until someone stands up and stops this bully, the world will be less safe for everyone.

Today’s Washington Times is reporting that some of the top Democrat leaders support the idea of increased troops in Afghanistan.  I hope they decide soon, since reinforcements tend to be of less value as time passes.  The troops are needed now.  Delay costs us American lives every day.

According to the article:

“House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, Missouri Democrat,
who attended the White House meeting, also strongly advocates for Gen.
McChrystal’s plan. He sent a six-page letter to Mr. Obama earlier this
month that he said implored the president to “give the general what he
needs.”

“Others, including House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman
Howard L. Berman, say they are exploring a range of options but not
taking Gen. McChrystal’s recommendation off the table.” 

The thing to remember here is that this is now President Obama’s war.  It became his war when he chose his own general.  To ignore the advice of his own hand-picked general is to risk failure of the military operation in that country.  To float the idea of making a deal with the Taliban is folly.  Does anyone remember what Afghanistan was like under the Taliban? 

There is a scene in the move The Kite Runner that is very graphic and I will not describe it here, but if you watch the director’s notes on the DVD of the movie, it is explained.  When America left Afghanistan after the Russians were defeated, the people of the country felt as if they had been abandoned.  The Taliban came into power and set up a regime that totally demoralized the people of Afghanistan.  For us to scale back our operations in that country in any way would only convince the Afghanis that we could not be depended upon.  Our recent actions regarding Israel, Poland, and the Czeck Republic have seriously damaged our credibility as an ally.  We don’t need to do that in Afghanistan.

Obviously, the big new of today is that President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.  This award is evidently given in anticipation of President Obama’s accomplishments in the direction of world peace.  The nomination process for the award closes February 1st.  President Obama was nominated less than a month after he took office.  This is sad.

The Wall Street Journal posted a story about the award this morning.  The Peace Prize Committee explained that in awarding President Obama the Peace Prize the prize they were encouraging him rather than rewarding him for his achievements.  Somehow I don’t think that was what Alfred Nobel had in mind.

President Obama now joins the group of Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Yasser Arafat as Nobel Peace Prize winners.  I think that says it all.  George Bush liberated 50 million muslims from tyranny and he is looked upon as a war monger.  President Obama is in the process of enabling Iran to go nuclear and he is looked upon as promoting peace.  When the Middle East explodes because of the anti-Israel stands of this administration, will the Nobel Peace Prize Committee ask for a recount?

Yesterday, the Foundry at the Heritage Foundation published the plan Congress is planning to use to pass healthcare before Thanksgiving despite the fact that a majority of Americans oppose the proposal. 

The article lists the steps Harry Reid will take to attach the healthcare bill to another bill in order to pass it.  The article deals with Congressional procedures, and I am not going to try to capsulize it here.  Please read the article and understand that this is not what America expects from its Congress.

The article sums it up:

“The San Francisco Examiner published an editorial today that exposed the fact that the American people can’t see the bill. “When then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama promised not to sign major legislation until it had been posted on the Internet for public reading at least five days, trusting voters took him at his word. Now they know better. Not only is the actual language of what is likely to become the main legislative vehicle for Obama’s signature health care reform not available on the Internet, it hasn’t been given to members of the key Senate committees or the Congressional Budget Office.” The procedure being used, in addition to the exclusion of the American people from the process, should be of grave concern to all who want to participate in democracy and have a say in Congress’ health care reforms that will touch 1/6th of the American economy.”

Unless the current Congress understands that passing this bill will result in their unemployment at the first available opportunity, there is no hope to keep America’s healthcare system as one of the best in the world.  Please call your Congressman and tell him that you do not support healthcare reform.

That was Ronald Reagan’s comment every time he heard that the Democrats in power were preparing to raise taxes.  Well, there they go again.

According to today’s Wall Street Journal, Nancy Pelosi is thinking about a Value Added Tax (VAT) as a way to fund the spending proposals of the present Congress.  John Podesta (an adviser to President Obama and president of the very liberal Center for American Progress)made a similar suggestion in September. 

The article points out that nearly every European country that has national healthcare has eventually imposed a VAT to help pay for it.  According to the article, a VAT applies to every level of production or service, rakes in piles of money, and is largely hidden from those who ultimately pay it–namely, consumers.  It is essentially a hidden tax that can add as much as 10 percent to the eventual cost of all goods.

Remember President Obama’s pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year?  This is a way to raise taxes on everyone and theoretically not have anyone notice.  We’ll see how that goes.

Today’s New York Post posted an article about the investigation into the financial activities of Representative Charlie Rangel.  Mr. Rangel has been charged with failing to report income, failing to pay income taxes on some income, and lying on his Congressional disclosure forms.  The charges involve rent-controlled apartments, car storage, and other items which do call into question the man’s moral compass.  He is the head of the committee that writes and oversees tax codes (which evidently he does not fully understand).

According to the article:

“In a convoluted parliamentary charade, Democrats voted in nearly lockstep to thwart a resolution to remove Rangel from the powerful chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee, where he sits as the nation’s top tax-writer — at least until his numerous ethical and legal woes have been resolved.”

Nancy Pelosi had promised that the investigation of Charlie Rangel would be completed by now, but somehow that has not been accomplished.

As President Obama holds his meetings on Afghanistan, our troops are dying there.  When a military leader asks for reinforcements, generally they are needed in a timely manner in order to be effective.  The constant meetings are costing American lives.  Congress does not know how to run a war–the military does–there is nothing to be gained by all these meetings.  The Generals involved have already given us the strategy and told us what was needed.

Fred Barnes posted an article at the Weekly Standard blog yesterday on the war in Afghanistan and the lack of action from the White House.  He refers to a book by Lewis Sorley entitled A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam and another book entitled Lessons in Disaster by Gordon Goldstein.

Mr. Barnes points out:

“Sorley’s book is relevant because it points out what actually happened in Vietnam: by employing what we now call a counter-insurgency strategy, American forces had actually won the war by 1970, only to toss it away later by abandoning the South Vietnamese government. That strategy, similar to what has been pursued successfully in Iraq with the “surge,” replaced the failed search-and-destroy effort of General William Westmoreland. Despite this history, search-and-destroy, which had failed in Iraq, is what Vice President Biden and other Democrats are urging in Afghanistan. They refer to it today as counter-terrorism.”

Mr. Barnes concludes:

“So let’s review the bidding in the current debate on Afghanistan. Biden and many Democrats, reportedly including White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, want the president to adopt a strategy that failed twice and, so far as I know, has never led to success. Gen. McChrystal and Republicans, along with Senator Joe Lieberman and a few other Democrats, are in favor of a strategy that has twice proven to be successful.”

I agree.  It’s time to let the military run the war and keep the politicians out of it.  The lives of our troops depend on it!  

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article yesterday about energy independence–you remember, the issue that disappeared after the price of gasoline went down.  Well, it may come back with a vengance.  On Tuesday, the British paper, The Independent published a story stating that secret talks were going on between the Russians, the Chinese, and some Arab states about no long paying for oil in American dollars.  The report was promptly denied, but actually, it needs a second look.

In order to prevent a depression after 911, the Bush administration lowered interest rates to a point that undermined the value of the dollar overseas.  This was partially responsible for the drastic increases in gasoline and oil prices we saw in the last year of the Bush administration.  The fiscal policies of the current administration in Washington have also seriously impacted the value of the dollar.  The out-of-control spending will eventually lead to inflation, making the dollars held by other countries worth less than their current value.  This will create a reluctance to buy into US bonds and securities. 

Sarah Palin referred to these events on her Facebook message on Tuesday.  She points out that:

“In his book Architects of Ruin, Peter Schweizer points out that the Obama administration is focusing primarily on “green energy,” while ignoring our need to develop our domestic conventional energy resources.[5] We’re ignoring the looming crisis caused by our dependence on foreign oil. Because we’re dependent on foreign nations for our oil, we’re also at their mercy if they decide to dump the dollar as their trade currency. We can’t allow ourselves to be so vulnerable to the whims of foreign nations. That’s why we must develop our own domestic supplies of oil and gas.”

No one in our current government is paying attention to this danger–they are too busy advancing their own interests–not ours.  It is time to take a serious look at the people making our national decisions and consider if replacing all of them might be the best thing for our country.

I don’t have a problem with murderers sentenced to death as long as the evidence against them is beyond a reasonable doubt and a murder was involved. I do, however, wonder why some states are unwilling to support the death penalty in those circumstances.

Boston.com posted an article today saying that the killing of Kimberly Cates in her isolated home in Mont Vernon and the violent attack on her daughter did not meet the criteria set in the state of New Hampshire for the death penalty.   The state is obviously required to follow the law as it sentences the four youths charged in this murder, but I question the message these criteria send to our society.

According to New Hampshire law, in order to warrant the death penalty a murder must meet six conditions including a paid assassination, a killing that involves kidnapping, and a homicide that entails sexual assault.  Since none of these conditions were met, the death penalty does not apply.  Wow.  These four teenages are accused of planning to rob Kimberly Cates and then murdering her and attacking her young daughter in the process.  Is the message we are sending here that killing this woman was not a crime worthy of the death penalty?  Does Kimberly Cates’ life have value?

Obviously every state has the right to its own laws, but it seems to me that killing someone is murder (particularly when it is part of another crime being committed) and deserves the death penalty.  To say otherwise is to say that the life of the criminal is worth more than the life of the victim.

Today’s New York Daily News posted an article by their editorial staff on the subject of whether or not terrorists should be eligible for the death penalty.  The discussion is centered around the case against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a former Guantanamo detainee being tried in New York in a civilian court. 

According to the article:

“Now, Attorney General Eric Holder has broken further ground in Ghailani’s case by barring the Manhattan U.S. attorney from seeking the death penalty – never mind that Ghailani allegedly helped buy a truck and load it with the TNT that leveled the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania in 1998.”

There are some problems in trying him in a civilian court.  Much of the evidence would be classified–does the jury need security clearances? 

What is the argument for not subjecting terrorists to the dealth penalty?  I firmly believe that terrorists deserve to be executed, but my husband pointed out a small fact that I have overlooked.  Martrydom is a positive thing for most terrorists–not a negative.  If we execute terrorists, do we make them heroes in the terrorists movement?  Is that what we really want to do?

I pose the question.  I do not claim to have the answer.  It is an interesting problem though.

According to a Sealttle newspaper via Associated Press, some Somali pirates had a rude awakening early Wednesday.  They innocently fired on what they thought was a commercial ship, but it turned out to be a French naval vessel.  The ship they fired on was La Somme, a 3,800-ton refueling ship.  The pirates were just innocently working off the coast.  They had no idea this was a military ship.

The article states

“France is a key member of the EU’s naval mission, Operation Atalanta, fighting Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. It has aggressively tracked and caught suspected pirates and handed over at least 22 to Kenya. An additional 15 suspects were brought to France for prosecution after allegedly seizing boats belonging to French nationals.”

Catching the pirates is a great thing, but I think we need to go back to the laws of old that hanged people for piracy.  Let’s hope these pirates do not spend the rest of their days in a place with three square meals, big screen television sets, and gyms that would amaze all of us.

Today’s Wall Street Journal posted an op-ed piece explaining one of the ways the government plans to cut the cost of healthcare in its proposed reform.  Understandably, Congress is attempting to create a system that is cheaper so that they can provide healthcare for everyone.  However, sometimes there is a serious cost in doing something cheaper. 

In order to cut costs, Medicare would rank doctors among their peers according to the amount of money they cost the program.  Begining in 2015, any doctor who ranks in the top ten percent of costs would have his Medicare reimbursement cut 5 per cent.  Medicare currently pays 83 cents on the dollar when compared to private insurance.  In practice, this rule will only apply to specialists.  It gets worse.  According to the article:

“In Medicare, meanwhile, the Administration is using regulation to change how doctors are paid to benefit general practitioners, internists and family physicians. In next year’s fee schedule, they’ll see higher payments on the order of 6% to 8%. The loose consensus is that the U.S. does have too few primary care doctors–less than 5% of medical students are entering the field–in part because they’re underpaid.

“Fair enough. But this boost for GPs comes at the expense of certain specialties. The 2010 rules, which will be finalized next month, visit an 11% overall cut on cardiology and 19% on radiation oncology. They’re targets only because of cost: Two-thirds of morbidity or mortality among Medicare patients owes to cancer or heart disease.”

Please read the entire article for the details.  This is truly the ‘kill granny’ bill. 

Yesterday’s Power Line posted an article about the proposed expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) by the Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress.  In case you have forgotten, the CRA is the organization that encourages making loans to people who cannot or will not pay them back and offers loans with “flexible underwriting criteria.  It’s very nice to want to help low-income people buy houses, but reality needs to enter into the picture at some point.  Someone making $ 30,000 a year cannot afford to buy a $ 500,000 house with no down payment.  Encouraging that sort of purchase is what led us into the banking crisis to begin with.  Now Congress is poised to do it all over again.

Either these people do not understand wise lending practices or they don’t care.  Either way, this is legislation that needs to be stopped.

Yesterday I posted an article with the following opening paragraph:

“Yesterday China View reported that Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday that “Israel is number one threat to Middle East” with its nuclear arms.  This statement was made at a joint press conference with Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran.” 

That in itself was a little disconcerting, but there is an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal that is even more troubling.  The article points out that President Obama has stated his aim to make the world free of nuclear weapons.  He is going to have to start somewhere.  Why not Israel?   Bret Stephens predicts a news article in January of next year regarding a United Nations resolution:

“The resolution calls for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. It also demands that Israel sign the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and submit its nuclear facilities to international inspection. Two similar, albeit nonbinding, resolutions were approved last September by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.”

In his prediction, America abstains in the voting, letting the resolution pass, in order to show Iran that we have changed from our ‘unfair’ policies of the past.

Unfortunately, this is a possibility.  With the coziness between the IAEA and Iran, the chances of Iran curbing her nuclear program are almost non-existent.  Considering the UN’s love of sanctioning Israel at every opportunity, the attempt to confront Israel on her nuclear weapons will occur as soon as America gets out of the way.  Unfortunately, the administration of President Obama has already sent signals that it will not stand up for Israel.

Hopefully this prediction is totally off base, but I don’t think it is.

Yesterday, Investor’s Business Daily ran a related story. 

Yesterday China View reported that Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday that “Israel is number one threat to Middle East” with its nuclear arms.  This statement was made at a joint press conference with Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran. 

According to the article:

“”This (possession of nuclear arms) was the cause for some proper measures to gain access to its (Israel’s) power plants … and the U.S. president has done some positive measures for the inspections to happen,” said ElBaradei.”

This is an amazing article–why is Mohamed ElBaradei holding joint press conferences with Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran?

Israel has had nuclear weapons for some time.  It has never threatened the existence of its neighbors.  It has never threatened to use its nuclear weapons unless it was going to be overrun as a country and there are reports saying that is not true.  Israel is not the one supporting terrorism in other countries or firing rockets on innocent civilian populations.

I think the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has totally outlived its usefullness!