Tag Archives: Power Line

Rules For Radicals In Action

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Saul Alinksy, the original community organizer, wrote a book entitled, “Rules for Radicals.” Rule #4 states, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)” Unfortunately that rule has been used excessively by many of the American political left. The latest example has to do with the Keystone Pipeline.

Two people the American political left loves to hate are the Koch Brothers. Yesterday John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line describing how the political left is using the Koch Brothers as an excuse to oppose the Keystone Pipe Line. So what is the connection between the Keystone Pipeline and the Koch Brothers? Well, before I go into that, I would like to mention the connection between the Keystone Pipeline and Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett controls Berkshire Hathaway which owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad. Burlington Northern Santa Fe will be shipping oil by rail if the pipeline is not built. The railroad expects to “eventually” be shipping 1 million barrels of oil per day.

But, back to the Koch Brothers. A website called Grist claims that the Koch Brothers will make “as much as $100 billion in profits if the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is given the go-ahead by President Obama.” So let’s look at the claim. First of all, the construction of the Keystone Pipeline would result in Koch Industries paying more for oil–not less. (See the article at Power Line for details). The article at Power Line also deals with the claim that the Koch Brothers own a good part of the acreage the oil for the pipeline will come from. Actually, it turns out that the Koch Brothers lease the acreage and that if the pipeline is built, it will take 476 years for the Koch Brothers to break even after the construction of the Pipeline.

The article at Power Line concludes:

So what is going on here? Rich liberals hire kids–recent college graduates, or maybe college or high school students–to produce idiotic “research reports” that can be dismantled by anyone familiar with arithmetic, let alone the oil and gas industry, of which these kids obviously know nothing at all. The claims these reports make are completely divorced from reality, but liberals don’t seem to care. The Huffington Post headlines: “Keystone XL Pipeline Could Yield $100 Billion For Koch Brothers.” PolicyMic: “Actually, You Probably WILL Guess Who Stands to Make $100 Billion Off the Keystone XL Pipeline.” TruthDig: “Koch Brothers Stand to Make $100 Billion From Keystone Pipeline.” And, of course, the Kos Kidz are all over it.

This isn’t just stupid, it is insane. It is also, unfortunately, a good example of what modern liberalism has come to. No regard for truth, just blind hatred.

Rules for radicals at work.

 

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Hmmmmm

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This is a sign (posted on PowerLine) outside one of the monuments in Washington, D.C. I have a few questions. When was the sign made up? Who authorized the sign? Who paid for the sign? How was the sign made after the government was shut down?

The article at Power Line also makes a very interesting point:

The irony of an American citizen being chased away from a memorial to Thomas Jefferson because, well, you can’t visit monuments when our government is 17% shut down, is almost too much. But consider the significance of the fact that a guard was present. That expense was being incurred, just as if the memorial were open; so why did it need to be closed? The difference was that instead of being there to provide security, the guard’s role was to chase away any visitors who were bold enough to ignore the signs and the yellow tape.

All of which is more evidence that the Obama administration is engaged in a massive charade to hype the damage allegedly done by the partial shutdown. It corroborates the Park Service ranger quoted by the Washington Times who said, “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

Please follow the link above to the Power Line article to read about the American citizen who was chased away from the Jefferson Memorial.

 

 

 

 

 

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I Guess It Depended On Where You Were

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New England had a hot July this summer. I live in a house without central air-conditioning, and we ran between two and three air conditioners most of the month. Usually we run two for about two weeks. Well, I guess there were other places that just weren’t quite that warm.

This is a map from a website called climatedepot.com:

RecordEvents-21Aug13

The map shows high and low record temperatures from July 24 through August 21. This was posted on their website yesterday.

Meanwhile, Steven Hayward at Power Line points out that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will begin its battle to convince us that global warming is real and man-made within the next few weeks. The IPCC will bring out its report in three sections–Science, Impacts, and Mitigation. The Science report is due out next month.

We already know from past scandals that much of the data used to prove global warming was cherry-picked–important warming periods were left out to skew the data. We have the emails to prove this. So why is the UN trying to convince us that global warming is real and that we are responsible? Because any bureaucracy in any governmental organization likes to grow and likes to control more people and more money. If the IPCC can convince Americans and other wealthy countries that unless they give all kinds of money to non-wealthy countries we will all die, chances are we will give them the money. Unfortunately, this is not about concern for the earth–this is about taking money from wealthy countries and giving it to other countries (generally run by tyrants who will live gloriously at our expense while giving nothing to the people of their countries.)

The earth’s climate goes through cycles. It has gone through cycles before man was here. Those cycles are somehow built into the way the earth works. So far we have not successfully figured out how those cycles work. In recent years the National Weather Service in America has predicted catastrophic hurricane seasons caused by global warming. We have had some severe hurricanes, but it has been a long time since we have seen a catastrophic hurricane season.

The bottom line here is that we as people do not control the earth. We could give all the money we have to corrupt dictators in third-world countries, and we still would not control the earth. We need to do everything we can to keep our air and planet clean, but giving money to countries that will not spend money responsibly helps neither us or the earth.

 

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An Interesting Perspective On Immigration Reform

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Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about the economic impact the current proposals regarding immigration reform will have on the incomes of Americans.

This week in his weekly address, President Obama stated the following:

The Senate’s plan would also provide a big boost to our recovery. And on Wednesday, we released a report detailing exactly how big a boost that would be.

The report is based on the findings of independent, nonpartisan economists and experts who concluded that, if the Senate’s plan becomes law, our economy will be 5% larger in two decades compared to the status quo. That’s $1.4 trillion added to our economy just by fixing our immigration system.

Here in America, we’ve always been a nation of immigrants. That’s what’s kept our workforce dynamic, our businesses on the cutting edge, and our economy the strongest in the world. But under the current system, too many smart, hardworking immigrants are prevented from contributing to that success.

John Hinderaker points out:

And who might those supposedly “independent, nonpartisan economists and experts” be? When you check out the actual report, here is who they are:

President’s National Economic Council, Domestic Policy Council, Office of Management and Budget, and the Council of Economic Advisers.

In other words, extensions of the office of the president. His appointees–high level flacks.

That’s the first problem with that statement. The second problem is explained by a Power Line reader with amazing math skills who sent a note to Power Line which definitely disputed that claim.

The reader reports:

The claim is that aggregate GDP will be 5% higher in 20 years than otherwise, equal to $1.4 trillion in constant dollars. By simple algebra that means they are assuming a status quo future GDP of $28 trillion and therefore an immigration-enhanced GDP of $29.4 trillion. But wait! What about GDP per capita, the only meaningful measure of economic growth for the populace? Well…population will increase from today’s 315 million to about 378 million under the current immigration and population levels, and to about 410 million with the new immigration regime, conservatively estimated. [Ed.: That is a VERY conservative estimate.] Simple arithmetic demonstrates that future GDP per capita without the new immigration levels is $74,000, whereas with increased immigration it is $71,700.

…Their plan is simply to import scores of millions of unskilled 3rd world immigrants, covered by a fig leaf of a few hundred thousand high skilled STEM workers, 90% of whom we can easily do without, in order to create “economic growth” — in the aggregate — by a massive population expansion from the outside–but not growth that will benefit existing native born Americans at all. And that is not counting the inevitable economic drawbacks of this grotesque giantism — overcrowding, land use issues, infrastructure deterioration, and environmental degradation, to name a few.

The ability of some of our elected leaders to lie in order to further whatever agenda they have is amazing to me. I would love to see our immigration policies reformed–they are awful. However, the current changes proposed by the Senate are not the answer. The incremental proposals coming from the House of Representatives might better solve our current problems.

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Does This Mean Mayor Bloomberg Will Put The Salt Shakers Back On The Tables At New York City Restaurants?

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On June 21, a website called PreventDisease.com posted a story stating that there is no benefit in reducing salt intake and it may even be dangerous. In the past, New York‘s Mayor Bloomberg has attempted to limit the use of salt in New York City’s restaurants.

Now the Democrat food police (yes, I realize that Mayor Bloomberg is a Republican, but check the circumstances of his becoming mayor) have a new issue. First Lady Michelle Obama has been trying to change the lunch programs in our schools.

On Friday, Steven Hayward posted an article at Power Line about the latest escapades of the Democrat food police.

The article quotes a Washington Times article:

“[Food service manager Nicky] Boehm and her staff worked hard to implement the new regulations, but there were just too many problems and too many foods that students did not like and would not purchase,” said Assistant Superintendent Chris Abdoo about the National School Lunch Program in a statement reported by EAGNews.org. “Students complained of being hungry with these lunches and the district lost money.”

The school system decided to instead create its own lunch menu for next year.

The district lost about $100,000 trying out the federal menu, which offered such meals as “part” of a chicken patty on a minicroissant, EAGNews.org reported.

Would that satisfy you? It would be really nice to see children eat better, but I am not sure that is something the government can accomplish. It seems to me that it’s not even an education problem. Most people over the age of twelve understand that eating fast food every night or living on potato chips and sugar is not a good idea. The only thing that will reduce the obesity rate in America will be American’s deciding that they want to lose the weight. It comes down to individual choice.

The ‘nanny state’ is not really helpful to anyone. As science changes regarding salt and other foods, the government may not be in a position to undo the regulations it set in place. We don’t always make the correct personal choices, but we all have the right to make those choices.

 

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Ignoring History

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One of the best headlines of the day comes from Steven Hayward at Power Line. The headline reads, “Did Something Happen at Gettysburg?” This week is the sesquicentennial of the Battle of Gettysburg. There have been commemorative observances all week of the sesquicentennial observances all week. Neither the President or the Vice-President has attended any of the observances.The mainstream media has not widely covered the events.

Breitbart.com posted the following:

Guelzo (Historian Allen Guelzo, author of the New York Times bestselling book Gettysburg: The Last Invasion) noted that it was mostly just ordinary people who showed up to the Gettysburg memorial, not just Americans but people from around the world who wanted to pay tribute to perhaps the most significant event and moment of sacrifice in our nation’s history. He also noted that the three-day commemoration of the event, July 1-3, was not covered by any of the major networks.

 “Where is the Today Show? Where is Good Morning America?” said Guelzo.

 Attendees have mostly shown great reverence to the honor and sacrifice of the men who fought on both sides of the battle, according to Guelzo. Most have honored Abraham Lincoln’s dictate in the famous Gettysburg Address: “never forget what they did here.” The “they” that Lincoln referred to were the soldiers in uniform on the battlefield 150 years ago who bled and died for the cause and the country that they believed in. 

 Visitors endured torrential rainfall to see the battlefield as tens of thousands came to pay tribute to this special moment in American and world history.

Gettysburg was an important event in American history. It is a shame that the Obama Administration and the mainstream media have ignored it.

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Following The Money In ObamaCare

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Who makes money in ObamaCare? Not doctors, hospitals, consumers, or health insurance companies, so who is making money and what is it all about?

On Wednesday, John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article explaining where some of the money the government will take from taxpayers to fund ObamaCare will go.

ObamaCare is not about health care–it’s about politics. The Power Line article used an editorial posted at Investor’s Business Daily on Tuesday as its main source of what is happening to taxpayer money.

Investor’s Business Daily reports:

The Obama administration granted a whopping $910 million to California to set up its insurance exchange. That money is not for bandages, surgery, nurses and doctors to care for the sick. Nor is it for insurance plans, though $910 million could buy generous coverage for at least 113,000 people!

Shockingly, the $910 million is slated for bureaucracy, including rich compensation packages for exchange employees ($360,000 a year for the executive director) and contracts for computer equipment, public relations and “outreach.”

Outreach is the largest expenditure and where the real monkey business occurs.

What in the world is ObamaCare outreach? It seems as if California lawmakers don’t want the taxpayers to be able to answer that question:

Amazingly, California legislators passed a law that the exchange could keep secret for a year who received the contracts and indefinitely how much they were paid. California’s open-records laws would otherwise prohibit such secrecy.

Most of the groups that got the money are not health care related. The include: the California NAACP ($600,000), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) ($2 million), Los Angeles County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO ($1 million),

The article reports:

These organizations, closely allied with the Democratic Party, are being funded by your tax dollars to conduct “outreach,” meaning the kind of phone banking and door-to-door canvassing that activists do to turn out the vote. They will turn out the uninsured to enroll on the exchanges and in the Democratic Party.

The $37 million awarded last month is only the first installment of California’s $190.4 million to be spent on contracts for “outreach” through December 2014.

ObamaCare will create generations of Democrat voters and horrendous health care for everyone. It needs to go away very fast.

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How To Lie With Statistics

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This article has three sources–a Power Line article by John Hinderaker posted yesterday, a Hot Air post from yesterday, and a CNS News article from today. The subject of this article is the Congressional Budget Office report being hailed by supporters of the immigration bill as another reason to pass the bill. Not so fast.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is non-partisan. It is also required to base its report of the numbers given to it. This makes it fairly easy for Congress to scam the system. Since the CBO only scores a ten-year window, all Congress has to do is put the major expenses of the legislation being scored outside of that window. Thus the current immigration bill says that the newly legalized immigrants will not be eligible for any federal programs for ten years. Amazing coincidence that the period of ineligibility ends after ten years. Does anyone want to predict what will happen on the first day after the ten years is up and our government is flooded with applications for government aid?

The article at Power Line points out:

Behind these rather antiseptic observations lies a human tragedy: falling wages and rising unemployment for the very segment of American society that has struggled the most in recent years. On top of that, the nation’s welfare system will be severely strained. While newly-legalized immigrants will not immediately be eligible for federal welfare benefits, that does not apply at the state and local levels. Those welfare systems will be overwhelmed with millions of new claimants–the cost to be borne, of course, by the taxpayers.

CNS News reports:

However, the cost estimate of the legislation that was released on Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office says that the legislation would actually allow the flow of new illegal aliens into the United States to continue at a rate equal to 75 percent of the current rate of illegal immigration. This will be the case, in part, argues CBO, because of people who overstay temporary work visas that will be authorized by the bill.

This revelation that 75 percent of illegal immigration would continue if the Senate immigration reform proposal were enacted is included in a section of the report headlined, “Future Unauthorized Residents.” The section is on page 23 of the 63-page report.

So let’s get this straight. The current immigration bill would negatively impact wages of Americans, strain state welfare programs, hurt taxpayers, and only stop 25 percent of illegal immigration. So why in the world would we want to pass it?

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Seeking Donations From Uninformed Voters

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Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a copy of a recent letter sent to potential Democrat donors.

This is the letter:

Subject: seriously, thanks!

John –

Last week, we asked you to help us do something big, something truly record breaking.

Well, thanks to your generous support, we had our BEST online showing for May ever!

Your contributions are already being put to use, protecting access to affordable higher education. In fact, we just launched an ad campaign on college campuses across the country, calling out House Republicans for voting to more than double student loan rates. Our campaign has been featured on PBS, CNN, and ABC News — but we’re just getting started.

Will you condemn House Republicans for attempting to make college more expensive?

Stand by President Obama’s veto threat against Republican student loan hikes: Click here to automatically add your name >>

Thanks for all that you do,

Democrats 2014

This is a very persuasive letter–unfortunately very little of it is accurate. The article at Power Line explains some of the inaccuracies:

Only interest rates on subsidized Stafford Loans will be impacted by the July change. Subsidized Stafford Loans are need-based loans for undergraduate students only.

Interest rates on subsidized Stafford Loans issued after July 1, 2013 are set to double to 6.8 percent. Loans issued before this date will come with 3.4 percent interest, which is locked in for the life of the loan.

The article concludes:

So how do the Democrats try to justify their claim that House Republicans “vot[ed] to more than double student loan rates?” They don’t try to justify it. It is an absurd lie, easily recognized as such by anyone who has the faintest acquaintance with the issue. But the Democrats’ fundraising appeals are not directed to the well-informed. They are aimed at low-information voters who turn out for the Democrats in droves because they have no idea what is really going on, and are easily fooled. No doubt the “ad campaign” of which the Democratic Party boasted today will fool thousands, maybe millions, more.

What is remarkable about this is not that party operatives are willing to lie for money, but that not a single prominent Democrat has objected to the practice. Is there a single Democratic office-holder who is willing to criticize his party’s use of blatant lies to seek political advantage? The answer, so far, is: No. Not one.

At the present time, the political left seems to have lost its moral compass. In the past there have been Democrats of principle, but right now we seem to have very few of those. Eventually this sort of activity will catch up to the Democrat party. At that time, I hope there will be some honest men who will step forward and lead the party back to its roots. I was a Democrat for much of my life. It breaks my heart to see where my party has gone.

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A Hero From The Past

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Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted a story today about Ted Williams. I didn’t grow up in Massachusetts, and I admit that I really didn’t know much about Ted Williams. The story surprised me.

Ted Williams was called into the Army during the Korean War. At the time he had a wife and a child. He was offered the chance to avoid combat by playing on a service baseball team, but chose to go into combat instead. It had been eight years since he had flown an aircraft.

Mr. Mirengoff at Power Line relates a story about Ted Williams that was shared by John McCain during the “Straight Talk Express.” John McCain admired Ted Williams, who served as a fighter pilot in two wars.

The article reports:

During a mission in North Korea, Williams’ fighter plane was crippled by a strike that knocked out its hydraulics and electrical systems. The plane already was on fire when an explosion rocked its undercarriage as it approached the landing strip.

Williams pulled off a wheels-up “belly” landing, skidding along the tarmac with sparks flying for almost a mile before coming to a stop. The nose burst into flames, threatening the cockpit. Williams blew off the canopy, struggled out of the plane, and, after limping clear of it, hit the ground.

John McCain one asked Ted Williams about the incident–why he didn’t eject instead of attempting such a dangerous landing.

The article reports the answer:

Williams explained that, at six feet three inches tall, he believed he would have blown out both knees had he ejected himself from the cramped cockpit. And that would have meant the end of his baseball-playing career. Therefore, he decided he had to land the plane.

Sometimes we just don’t know what goes into the thought processes of a hero.

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If It Were Not Horrible It Would Be Funny

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I have already chosen the quote of the week, but I wonder if I can put the following quote up for next week’s Quote of the Week.

Scott Johnson posted a story at Power Line yesterday about some of the recent revelations about Benghazi. Included in that story was the following quote:

“They’ve tried to point a finger at people more senior than where we found the decisions were made,” Pickering said of Clinton’s critics. On the other hand, according to Pickering, they also found it unnecessary to chat with her because she had already accepted “the full responsibility.”

Let me get this straight–the Accountability Review Board (ARB), led by former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, did not feel it was necessary to interview Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because she had already accepted “the full responsibility.” Therefore, it was not important to find out what she knew, when she knew it, or what decisions she was responsible for on the night of the attack on Benghazi or before that night. Wow! How many teenagers would welcome a deal like that?!

The article at Power Line reminds us of another aspect of the ARB:

How did the estimable men of the ARB miss Gregory Hicks in the information gathering phase of their work? The ARB harks back to Richard Nixon’s desired resolution of the controversy over production of the Watergate tapes: The Stennis Compromise. In lieu of producing the tapes, Nixon proposed, bring in some eminent but hearing-impaired older man to check out the tapes and report back. The Stennis Compromise was laughed out of consideration. Only Democrats can get away with something like that.

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Politicizing The Internal Revenue Service

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Politicizing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is not a new or original idea. I am sure it has been done in the past in varying degrees, but the Obama Administration seems to have turned it into an art form. They have a slightly less obvious approach–not so much audits, but collecting information on political opponents.

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article yesterday on some past abuses of the IRS by the Obama Administration.

The article at Power Line reports:

In August 2010, Austin Goolsbee, who directed Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board and later chaired his Council of Economic Advisers, gave a press briefing in which he discussed corporate income taxes. In that briefing, he suggested that he had access to confidential IRS data, and falsely accused the administration’s beta noire, Koch Industries, of not paying corporate income taxes.

The article goes on to give the exact quote. The obvious question asked in the Power Line article is, “How did an Obama Administration official obtain confidential IRS tax records?” It should also be noted here that the charges were false. The fact that the charges were false probably doesn’t matter–I am willing to bet that more people heard the false charges than heard that the charges were false.

The article at Power Line concludes:

UPDATE: Also, let’s not forget Obama’s joke, during the first days of his presidency, in a speech at Arizona State University:

I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.

At the time, most people thought he was kidding. But as Glenn Reynolds pointed out at the time, jokes about presidential abuse of power are not funny when they come from the president. With hindsight, more attention should have been paid.

Mary Katharine Ham posted an article at Hot Air yesterday showing exactly what questions organizations containing the words ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot’ were asked. The questions are quite revealing. The American Center for Law & Justice has handled lawsuits by a number of these organizations protesting their treatment, and the article at Hot Air lists specific questions their clients were asked:

IRS1

IRS2

IRS3

Please follow the link above to the Hot Air article to read further questions and compliance instructions. The blame for this has been put on some low-level IRS employees in Cincinnati. As someone who used to work for the government many years ago, I find it hard to believe that low-level employees would take this kind of initiative on their own. At any rate, I wondered why the questions asked didn’t include the political affiliation of the household pets of the boards of directors of the various organizations. It seems as if every other question was asked.

 

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Counting The Real Cost Of The Immigration Bill

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I suppose it is necessary to begin this article by saying that I support legal immigration. I think we should make it easy for educated, hard-working people to enter this country without jumping through hoops and spending excessive time and money. However, we have nothing to gain by welcoming people who will be a burden because they do not have the skills to hold down a job and support themselves. At that point immigration becomes another load on an economy that is struggling to move ahead.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article today detailing the cost of the immigration bill currently under consideration.

The article at Power Line reports:

The Heritage Foundation has released its long awaited study of the cost to American taxpayers of legalizing the current population of illegal immigrants. The study, available here, estimates the cost at $6.3 trillion, at a minimum.

…The bottom line is that current illegal immigrants would receive around $9.4 trillion in government benefits and services over the course of their lifetimes, and would pay about $3.1 trillion in taxes. Hence, a net fiscal deficit of $6.3 trillion.

The numbers used in the calculation include such things as Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, public housing, public education, and community services such as police and firemen.

Again, I strongly encourage changing the legal immigration system to make it easier for hard-working people who want to work to come to America. I just don’t want to open the gates wide for people who will only add to the financial burden of the country.

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When The Government Controls Healthcare Bad Things Happen

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When the government is allowed to decide what treatment is appropriate for medical problems, bad things happen. Yesterday Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted a story about one particular incident and a possible solution.

TRICARE is the military’s healthcare program. It covers military personnel, retirees, and military families for all branches of the military. Rep. Tom Cotton is co-sponsoring legislation to make sure our military and their families get the care they need.

The article reports:

H.R. 1705, also known as “Kaitlyn’s Law,” would make sure that Tricare covers doctor-prescribed therapeutic exercises or therapeutic activities. When the doctors and therapists treating a patient covered by TRICARE agree that a particular form of therapy is needed, and can justify their decision on medical grounds, the patient would receive reimbursement for that therapy.

Kaitlyn is the child of a military family. She has numerous physical problems that cause her to be incapable of speaking or walking by herself. One of these problems is severe scoliosis. Without effective treatment, the curvature of her spine is so severe that as it increases her bones will pop out of joint and she will eventually be crushed; The challenge for her family was finding effective therapy.  When conventional therapy failed, they eventually found something called “hippotherapy.” This involved riding a horse in circles to stretch her back muscles and force her to sit upright. The Pentagon decided that this was not a ‘proven’ therapy (despite the fact that it worked) and stopped paying for it.

The article continues:

In essence, then, the government takes the position that it will pay for physical therapy that wasn’t working for Kaitlyn, but won’t pay for the type of physical therapy that does work for her. And it took that position even as it admitted that there is reliable evidence supporting the value of “horse therapy.” In addition, Kaitlyn’s doctors presented sworn testimony as to its effectiveness on her.

Kaitlyn’s law would reverse this injustice, not just for her but for the many military families in need of need of hippotherapy, as well as other non-traditional modalities, such as a ball, balance board, barrel or bench. This tweak would not impose a new mandate on private insurance carriers. It would simply precludes military insurers from second-guessing the treatment choices made by doctors and therapists in the context of rehabilitative therapy.

Please follow the link to the article and read the letter submitted to Congress about this bill. We ask a lot of our military families–we need to take care of them.

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The Remaining Questions About Benghazi

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Benghazi does not seem to be going away. Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line reported that 700 retired special operations military personnel have signed a letter to members of the House of Representatives, asking them to investigate the Benghazi debacle. This is the link to the letter.

The concern of the former special ops personnel is that the American policy of leaving no one behind was not followed during the attack. The Ambassador and three other people were essentially abandoned by the American government that was supposed to protect them.

The letter states:

A longstanding American ethos was breached during the terrorist attack in Benghazi. America failed to provide adequate security to personnel deployed into harm’s way and then failed to respond when they were viciously attacked. Clearly, this is unacceptable and requires accountability. America has always held to the notion that no American will be left behind and that every effort will be made to respond when US personnel are threatened. Given our backgrounds, we are concerned that this sends a very negative message to future military and diplomatic personnel who may be deployed into dangerous environments.  That message is that they will be left to their own devices when attacked.  That is an unacceptable message.

The letter asks that the House Select Committee ask the Obama Administration sixteen questions that have not yet been answered and demand answers to those questions. The families of those Americans killed in the attack deserve at least that much.

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Faux Science

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John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article yesterday about some recent facts that have come out regarding global warming. It seems that we have been misled.

The chart below is from the article. It shows the difference between the made-up numbers and the scientific numbers:

The article explains how geologist Shaun Marcott had created his graph by changing the dates of reported temperatures to get the results he wanted.

The article quotes the Financial Post:

Stephen McIntyre of climateaudit.org began examining the details of the Marcott et al. work, and by March 16 he had made a remarkable discovery. The 73 proxies were all collected by previous researchers, of which 31 are derived from alkenones, an organic compound produced by phytoplankton that settles in layers on ocean floors, and has chemical properties that correlate to temperature. …

According to the scientists who originally published the alkenone series, the core tops varied in age from nearly the present to over a thousand years ago. Fewer than 10 of the original proxies had values for the 20th century. Had Marcott et al. used the end dates as calculated by the specialists who compiled the original data, there would have been no 20th-century uptick in their graph, as indeed was the case in Marcott’s PhD thesis. But Marcott et al. redated a number of core tops, changing the mix of proxies that contribute to the closing value, and this created the uptick at the end of their graph. Far from being a feature of the proxy data, it was an artifact of arbitrarily redating the underlying cores.

The earth routinely goes through climate cycles. As of yet, scientists do not totally understand these cycles. However, I believe that the scientific method calls for a study of the facts in order to reach a conclusion–not altering the facts to reach a desired conclusion.

Just for the record, I am not for pollution. I think we have a responsibility as residents of earth to keep things as clean as possible. I do think, however, that we have to balance the well being of the residents of earth with the price of progress. The current environmental movement may desire a clean planet, but they have lost their sense of balance.

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The Pitfalls Of Random Acts Of Charity

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It feels good to help someone who is less fortunate than yourself. We encourage our children to be generous, and we try to set a good example. However, our efforts are not always as helpful as we would like to think. I used to know a Pastor who when someone on the street asked him for money would offer to buy them lunch–that way he knew the money didn’t go toward drugs or alcohol. I don’t know the actual percentage of homeless people with drug or alcohol problems, but I suspect it’s fairly high.

Recently, a video of a New York City policemen went vital on YouTube because he bought a barefoot homeless man on the street a pair of new shoes. It was a beautiful gesture, but the story is not what it appears to be. Scott Johnson at Power Line posted ‘the rest of the story’ yesterday.

It seems that the homeless man actually did have a home–and multiple pairs of shoes. He earns a few hundred dollars a day (tax free) by walking the streets of New York City barefoot, asking for money.

The article at Power Line cites a New York Post article which concluded:

Hillman reminds us how easy it is to exploit generosity. His scam seems to have been directed at passers-by who take pity on a man who goes about Midtown pretending to be barefoot, poor and homeless. His example reminds us why it is important for the city to ensure that its own assistance is not exploited by those who don’t need it.

For in addition to the needy, New York also has a whole class of politicians and activists quick to denounce City Hall as cruel and heartless (and to sue) whenever it takes reasonable measures to weed out the deserving from the undeserving.

Scott Johnson draws a different conclusion:

I don’t think the Post quite gets the lesson offered by the Hillman saga as a case study. Despite Hillman’s exploitation of the kindness of strangers, I think his case is inherent in the welfare state. One way or another, however, it provides a case study worthy of continuing discussion.

The generosity of the policeman is commendable. The actions of the barefoot beggar are those of a con man taking advantage of the kindness of New Yorkers.

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A Contrast In Values

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Hamas has repeatedly told Israel, “We love death more than you love life.” That is the culture of Palestine–Hamas rules Palestine. This week there was a vivid illustration of that statement.

Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line reported that Mariam Farhat died in Gaza City after a long illness. She had been previously elected to the legislature in Gaza. She was the mother of six sons, but three died while committing suicide missions in Israel.

The article reports the touching story of her son Mohammed:

In a video that mother and son made together just before the attack, Farhat said: “I wish I had 100 boys like Mohammad. I’d sacrifice them for the sake of God.”

“When I see all the Jews in Palestine killed, that will be enough for me,” his mother said on camera. “I wish he will kill as many as he can, so they will be scared.” …

The video showed Mohammed holding hands with his mother, who prayed for him to become a “martyr,” the term Palestinians use for militants killed in attacks on Israelis. Armed with grenades and automatic rifles, he broke into a study hall, killing five seminary students before he was shot dead by a soldier.

Hamas supervised Mrs. Farhat’s funeral.

After reading Mrs. Farhat’s statement and seeing that she was honored for the sacrifice of her sons, I have no reason to believe there will ever be peace in the Middle East unless this kind of thinking changes.

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Broken Hockey Sticks

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This is one of those articles I occasionally write where I know nothing about the subject. I am not a scientist, but I do have a fairly effective truth alarm. The source of this story is reliable, and I trust the judgment of the author.

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article today about the latest global warming panic. A group of climate alarmists headed by geologist Shaun Marcott has tried to resurrect Michael Mann’s discredited hockey stick and has.sounded the alarm that the temperature of the oceans is rising at an alarming rate.

The article at Power Line reports:

Now Steve McIntyre, who was principally responsible for showing that Mann’s original hockey stick was a fraud, has gone over Marcott’s data on the key proxies he uses for 20th century temperatures, ocean cores. McIntyre found that Marcott and his colleagues used previously published ocean core data, but have altered the dates represented by the cores, in some cases by as much as 1,000 years.

Statistics are amazing things, and by making minor changes in them, you can get them to tell any story you choose to tell.

This is the graph from the article:

I will make no attempt to explain the graph, but strongly suggest that you follow the link to the Power Line article to read John Hinderaker’s explanation. Mr. Hinderaker also relies on my favorite site for any real information on climate change, wattsupwiththat.

The bottom line here is simple. The numbers are being fudged. The obvious questions are, “Who is fudging the numbers?” and “Why are the numbers being fudged?” What do the scientific community and the politicians gain by convincing us we are doomed unless we listen to them and do exactly what they say (I think I just answered my own question)? Do we really want to give that kind of control to anyone? I would be a whole lot more impressed by their insistence that we listen to them if they were practicing what they preach. Has anyone calculated Al Gore or Barack Obama’s carbon footprints lately?

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When A Budget Cut Isn’t A Budget Cut

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Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article about the current discussion on cutting the federal budget in order to deal with the growing deficit. Sequestration, which is seen as something that will seriously damage the American economy by most of Congress, is rapidly approaching; and because somehow the information has gotten out that the concept of sequestration was an idea created by the White House, there is an effort to prevent it from happening. There are a number of reasons to fight sequestration–despite the fact that defense and domestic spending does need to be cut, this is not a good time to compromise national defense. The Democrats are also screaming about the cuts to domestic spending. So the discussion continues, but it is not necessarily an honest discussion.

The article at Power Line lists some of the ‘targeting cuts’ the Democrats in Congress are praising:

But, as the Washington Post demonstrates, in practice “targeted cuts” frequently prove to be no cuts at all. Instead, they are a method through which legislators can claim to be slashing the budget while continuing to spend at the same levels as before.

Consider the $37.8 billion in “cuts” agreed to in 2011, proclaimed by President Obama as “the largest annual spending cut in our history.” The Post finds that package to be “an epic kind of Washington illusion, stuffed with gimmicks that made the cuts seem far bigger — and the politicians far bolder — than they actually were.”

For example, the Transportation Department took credit for “cutting” a $280 million tunnel that had been cancelled six months earlier and a $375,000 road project that had been created due to a typo on a road that didn’t exist.

Meanwhile, the Census Department took a $6 billion “cut” for not conducting the 2010 census in 2011. And Congress agreed, in the spirit of shared sacrifice, to “cut” $14.6 million by not spending money on a visitors center that had already been built.

These aren’t “smart” cuts, they are smart-ass ones.

Until each member of Congress is held responsible for their role in the runaway spending, the spending will continue. Until voters can easily learn how their Congressman or Congresswoman votes on spending issues, the runaway spending will continue and the budget deficits will continue to grow. At the current time, with low interest rates, about 15% of the money spent by the government goes to interest on the debt. This is the equivalent of paying the minimum on your credit card every month and wondering why you are going deeper into debt all the time. When interest rates increase, that number will rise sharply. Is this a burden we want to leave to our children as they grow up and inherit the country?

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Proposed Minnesota Law Proposes Gun Confiscation

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John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story yesterday about a proposed law in the Minnesota legislature that does call for confiscation of guns.

The article reports:

H.F. 241 relates to “assault weapons.” It defines “assault weapons” in more or less the usual way; I haven’t compared it line by line to Dianne Feinstein’s federal legislation, but the definition is similar if not identical. “Assault weapons” include all semiautomatic rifles that have a pistol grip or a hole in the stock through which you can put your thumb; any “protruding grip that can be held by the nontrigger hand;” a folding or telescopic stock; or a barrel shroud. So, what is it about a hole in the stock, a “protruding grip,” a folding stock and so on that explains why such weapons should be singled out for banning by the state? Nothing. These features have nothing to do with lethality and bear no rational relation to any legitimate governmental purpose.

…Under the Democrats’ legislation, no one can buy or possess an “assault weapon” in Minnesota. If you already own one as of February 1, you can keep it. But you have to register it, and give the state permission to inspect your home–which is the only place you can keep the “assault weapon”–to make sure you are storing it properly, and undergo annual background checks. You can’t sell the firearm or give it away, and when you die, your heirs are required to either destroy it or “surrender the weapon to a law enforcement agency for destruction.” So the statute represents a ban, followed by confiscation.

President Obama will be in Minnesota today supposedly to support this proposal. As I have said before, I am not personally a gun owner, although many members of my family are; however, I support the right of people to own guns, and I worry when the government talks about taking them away–for any reason.

This law (although hopefully it has no chance of passing) is frightening. It is frightening because the legislators think they can bring it up without fear of being voted out of office. The musket was the assault weapon of its day, and it was not banned in the Constitution. I think the founding fathers knew what they were doing.

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In The Middle East Which Country Allows Arabs The Most Civil Rights ?

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Scott Johnson at Power Line posted an article today about the annual report from Freedom House, an organization that annually reports on freedom around the world. The recently released report explains how the results were obtained, discusses trends and provides current rankings for all countries around the world.

Freedom House reports:

Key global findings:

The number of electoral democracies stood at 117, the same as for 2011. Two countries, Georgia and Libya, achieved electoral democracy status, while two were dropped from the category, Mali and the Maldives.

Four countries moved from Partly Free to Free: Lesotho, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Tonga. Three countries rose from Not Free to Partly Free: Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, and Libya. Mali fell two tiers, from Free to Not Free, and Guinea-Bissau dropped from Partly Free to Not Free.

Some notable trends highlighted in the report include increased Muslim-on-Muslim violence, which reaching horrifying levels in Pakistan and remained a serious problem in Iraq and elsewhere; a serious decline in civil liberties in Turkey; and among the Persian Gulf states, a steady and disturbing decline in democratic institutions and an increase in repressive policies.

Worst of the Worst: Of the 47 countries designated as Not Free, nine have been given the survey’s lowest possible rating of 7 for both political rights and civil liberties: Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Two territories, Tibet and Western Sahara, were also ranked among the worst of the worst.

An additional 5 countries and 1 territory received scores that were slightly above those of the worst-ranked countries, with ratings of 6,7 or 7,6 for political rights and civil liberties: Belarus, Chad, China, Cuba, Laos, and South Ossetia.

Let’s look at this summary for a minute. Many leaders in America claim that Sharia Law is compatible with American democracy. Saudi Arabia operates under Sharia Law–please note that they are listed as one of the worst or the worst. Note also that many of the countries listed in that category have Muslim governments.

The article at Power Line notes:

…The report notes some positive trends in the Middle East, yet Israel remains the region’s sole country ranked Free in Freedom House’s evaluation.

Today Israelis go to the polls to elect their government. Israel’s Arab citizens will vote and Arabs will be elected to Israel’s Knesset. Given the neighborhood, not to mention other factors, it’s a remarkable story.

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The Problem With Arithmetic

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The problem with arithmetic is that if you always use the same numbers you always get the same answers. You can’t change the answer (solution) without changing the numbers. It’s just too rigid! Unfortunately, America is about to fall victim to the rigidness of arithmetic. It won’t be obvious until after it happens, but it is coming.

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article yesterday about the arithmetic involved in solving America’s financial problems. He points out that what is happening in America is also happening around the world.

The article states:

American voters accepted Obama’s claim that no change is necessary, that $16 trillion of debt is nothing to worry about. In France, voters put socialists into office, vowing not to give an inch on government benefits, ever. In Spain, Greece, and elsewhere around the world, politicians promise their constituents that nothing has to change, more money can be found somewhere. They are all lying.

The article cites an article by Janet Daley that appeared in the U.K. Telegraph on Saturday. The opening paragraph of the article asks:

Was 2012 the year when the democratic world lost its grip on reality? Must we assume now that no party that speaks the truth about the economic future has a chance of winning power in a national election? With the results of presidential contests in the United States and France as evidence, this would seem to be the only possible conclusion. Any political leader prepared to deceive the electorate into believing that government spending, and the vast system of services that it provides, can go on as before – or that they will be able to resume as soon as this momentary emergency is over – was propelled into office virtually by acclamation.

After France raised the taxes on millionaires, the millionaires began leaving the country. As California continues to raise its taxes on ‘the rich,’ the exodus of the wealthy from that state continues. After Maryland raised taxes on millionaires, the number of millionaires in the state declined, and state tax revenue declined. There is a lesson here, and America needs to learn it.

The article in the Telegraph points out:

Barack Obama knows that a tax rise of those proportions in the US would be politically suicidal, so he proposes a much more modest increase – an income tax rate of around 40 per cent on the highest earners sounds very modest indeed to British ears. But that is precisely the problem. If a tax rise is modest enough to be politically acceptable to much of the electorate, it will not produce anything like enough to finance the universal American entitlement programmes, social security and Medicare, into a future with an ageing population. There is no way that “taxing the rich” – that irresistibly glib Left-wing solution to everything – can make present and projected levels of government spending affordable. That is why Britain and almost all the countries of the EU have redefined the word “rich” to mean those who are earning scarcely twice the average wage, and pulled more and more middle-income people into high tax bands. Not only are there vastly more of them but they are far more likely to stand still and be fleeced, because they do not have the mobility of the truly rich.

As the debate on the fiscal cliff continues, we need to keep our perspective on exactly what is going on.

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Some Interesting News From The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

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John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story yesterday about the current draft of the report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The draft has been leaked and contains one very interesting paragraph.

This is the paragraph:

Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link. We focus here on observed relationships between GCR and aerosol and cloud properties.

I am not a scientist, and to me that paragraph is a foreign language, but Mr. Hinderaker is kind enough to explain what it means.

He explains:

It shouldn’t be a surprise that variations in the Sun’s output are responsible, at least in part, for variations in Earth’s temperatures. The problem is that if you simply do the math on radiant heat, the known increase in solar activity during the second half of the 20th century accounts for only a small portion of the assumed increase in temperature over that period. So the alarmists have denied that the Sun plays a significant role. More recent work has strongly suggested that solar radiation plays a role above and beyond radiant heat, by influencing cloud cover, which is a key factor in temperature. Given the strong correlation between solar activity and temperature, this work has been persuasive.

The bottom line here is simple–we didn’t do it! The progress of civilization is not the major cause of global warming–the sun and the sun’s impact on cloud cover play a major role in global climate.

So what is really going on in the IPCC? The United Nations is no longer controlled by freedom-loving countries. It has been taken over by a block of third-world nations who feel that the developed nations of the world should finance the dictators and thugs running their countries. There is no concern here for science, truth, or preserving the planet. The concern is, “How can I get money to build a bigger house for myself while my people starve?” We saw that in the UN-run food-for-oil program in Iraq. Now we are seeing the same corruption in the blackmail attempts under the guise of combating ‘global warming.’

The entire leaked report (and more scientific analysis) can be found at wattsupwiththat.com. Please take the time to look at the leaked draft before it is changed!

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A Program That Needs To Be Stopped Before It Begins

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Yesterday Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted a story about the changes being made on the federal level to school curriculum in America. We are replacing classic literature with propaganda and junk.

The article reports:

Consider that one of the “informational texts” recommended as a replacement for, say, Great Expectations is “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management.” Students would thus study government propaganda in English class (this Executive Order was issued under President Bush, but it is still propaganda — a political sop to the environmental left, as Stanley Kurtz shows).

Another Common Core’s non-fiction exemplar is an excerpt from a 2009 New Yorker essay by Atul Gawande on health care. This too is propaganda – an effort to show that Obamacare is wise policy.

Proponents of downgrading the teaching of literature claim that their goal is to make sure U.S. students can read and understand complicated texts. But there are plenty of complicated texts that don’t amount to political propaganda, much less propaganda relating to current hot-button policy issues in which the Obama administration is heavily invested. If teaching students how to read such texts were the only goal here, the list of exemplar tests wouldn’t include one-sided political tracts about health care and the environment.

The new curriculum is related to the Race to the Top funds being given out by the Obama Administration. States are required to adopt common standards in order to compete for Race to the Top funds.

The article explains what this is about:

The shrewdest aspect of Obama’s education power play is the relative absence of his fingerprints. As noted, Common Core is being presented as having been adopted in 46 states and the District of Columbia. In reality, though, most of them hadn’t even seen the new standards. They were induced to agree to adopt whatever curriculum leftists like Darling-Hammond came up with as a condition of receiving federal funds.

There is value in a classical education. It should not be phased out in favor of an education that does not allow students to enjoy the writings of some of the great authors of the past. I realize that today’s children live in a world of instant information and texting, rather then literature, but they still need to know some of the great authors in western literature.

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