Yankee, come home?

The most significant thing about the Rolling Stone article, "The Runaway General," that apparently led to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation this week was not the remarks made by Gen. McChrystal or his inner cicle disparaging the Obama administration. Nor was it the unblinking reporting about the profane warrior culture of McChrystal's Afghanistan command, the self-proclaimed Team America. These are the people we want, and need, to stand post on the wall protecting our country (in fact, we could use a few of them now — and a wall — on the Mexican border). Rather, it is the strong indictment of the entire Afghan war counterinsurgent (COIN) strategy. It led me to wonder, why are we still in Afghanistan?

But even if he somehow manages to succeed, after years of bloody fighting with Afghan kids who pose no threat to the U.S. homeland, the war will do little to shut down Al Qaeda, which has shifted its operations to Pakistan. Dispatching 150,000 troops to build new schools, roads, mosques and water-treatment facilities around Kandahar is like trying to stop the drug war in Mexico by occupying Arkansas and building Baptist churches in Little Rock. "It's all very cynical, politically," says Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer who has extensive experience in the region. "Afghanistan is not in our vital interest – there's nothing for us there."

In March 2009, President Obama said this about the United States policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan:

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That's the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that could not be more just...

Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course. Instead, we will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable. We’ll consistently assess our efforts to train Afghan security forces and our progress in combating insurgents. We will measure the growth of Afghanistan’s economy, and its illicit narcotics production. And we will review whether we are using the right tools and tactics to make progress towards accomplishing our goals.

We presume that the major players in the Obama administration, so derided in the Rolling Stone article, are using this leadership crisis (military and civilian) to assess our "Af-Pak" policy. The president should inaugurate the new Afghanistan command with an Oval Office address that updates his March 2009 remarks with a clear assessment of our efforts so far and a statement of the path forward.

Health care lessons for America

A Canadian doctor has some very important lessons to teach Americans pondering health care reform, while a local think tank has succinctly presented its health care reform ideas based on principles of individual freedom, personal responsibility, economic freedom, and limited government.

The observations of Lee Kurisko, M.D., were published in his recent article, "What America Needs to Learn from Canadian Medicare," in the Summer 2009 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

"As a Canadian physician practicing in the U.S.," observes Dr. Kurisko, "I am confident that the systemic problems in American medicine pale in comparison with those of Canada...It is astonishing to discover that some Americans see Canada's system of government-delivered universal health care as a utopian solution to systemic medical services delivery problems in the U.S."

Dr. Kurisko's main points:

• Central planning does not work - "Stodgy, clunky bureaucracies cannot possibly meet patients’ needs in the way the marketplace does in almost every other economic sector."


• Price controls do not work - "With insufficient compensation for their time, effort, or investment of capital, doctors had a disincentive to provide services."


• Whoever controls the dollars is boss [or, as I like to say, "Who pays the piper calls the tune."] - "To paraphrase economist Milton Friedman, in free societies generally people get what they want. In government-controlled societies, people get what a bureaucrat says they may have."


• Medical care is not a "right" - "A 'right to health care' implies that someone has to provide it. But what of the liberty rights of physicians, nurses, and other medical workers? Or the property rights of taxpayers and entrepreneurs?"


• People can be persuaded to accept poor care - "Despite their professed individualism, however, Americans quietly accept statist programs like Social Security that have dangerously large unfunded liabilities. They also accept public education and its lackluster results...There is no reason to believe that Americans will not also be seduced and willingly come to embrace more government medicine."


• There are major similarities between Canadian and American medicine - "Both systems rely on third-party payment with its escalation of demand."

The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota has issued a new report, "Prognosis for National Health Insurance: A Minnesota Perspective." It quantifies the cost to Minnesotans of the $1 trillion health reforms proposed by President Obama and Congress. As an alternative to this massive spending (and debt) increase, the report makes recommendations such as:

• Provide for individual ownership of insurance policies. The tax deduction that allows employers to purchase your insurance should instead be given to the individual.


• Better leverage Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) to empower individuals to monitor their health care costs and create incentives for individuals to use on necessary services.


• Allow interstate purchasing of insurance. Policies in some states are more affordable because they include fewer “bells and whistles”. Consumers should be empowered to decide which benefits they need and what prices they are willing to pay.


• Reduce the number of mandated benefits insurers must cover, empowering consumers to choose which benefits they need is only effective if insurers are able to fill these needs.


• Eliminate unnecessary scope-of-practice laws and allow non-physician health care professionals to practice to the extent of their education and training. Retail clinics have shown that increasing the provider pool safely increases competition and access to care and empowers the patient to decide from whom they receive their care.


• Reform tort liability laws. Defensive medicine needlessly drives up medical costs and creates an adversarial relationship between doctors and patients.

Sound and fury

"If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard." —Deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina in a town hall strategy briefing on August 6, with senior White House adviser David Axelrod, to Democrat Senators

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil." —Sarah Palin on Facebook

What good are town hall meetings, anyway? They seem to bring out the most extreme elements on both sides, heighten emotions, and sometimes end in fistcuffs and trips to jail or the emergency room. They are routinely scripted by organizers and disrupted by protesters. In this age of Internet communication, aren't town hall meetings antiquated?

I know from attending my share of school board, city council, and legislative hearings over the years that there is a public comment continuum. Legislative hearings are strictly controlled by the committee chair, time limits on testimony are enforced, and questions from committee members can resemble cross-examination at trial (indeed, many legislators have law degrees). School board and city council meetings are usually less formal to encourage citizen participation, but there are still time and parliamentary limits. These meetings all generally occur in capitols, school district offices, and city halls.

The public comment portion of legislative or Congressional town hall meetings out in the community tend to be the loosest type of exchanges, and most often attract members of the general public who are inexperienced at the niceties of addressing the chair or even speaking in public at all. When there are hot-button issues on the table, as with Minnesota's academic standards a few years ago, public funding for the Twins stadium, smoking bans, and the current health reform debate, these meetings attract the media, organized testimony and demonstrators, and often more heat than light.

Although certainly not effective as a workshop for crafting good public policy, public hearings and town hall meetings are a traditional and necessary component of our American experiment in self-government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people. There is something quintessentially American about an elected official, whether from the local school board or the United States Senate, standing up in front of a school gymnasium full of his constituents to receive both praise and brickbats.

As someone observed during one of yesterday's Sunday interview shows, some politicians may love President Obama's vision for health care, but they love getting reelected even more. Town hall meetings, e-mail, social networking, and talk radio are all ways that the hoi polloi are participating in the political process like never before. Witness Sarah Palin's use of Facebook:

One can hardly deny that Palin's reference to "death panels" was inflammatory. But another way of putting that is that it was vivid and attention-getting. Level-headed liberal commentators who favor more government in health care, including Slate's Mickey Kaus and the Washington Post's Charles Lane, have argued that the end-of-life provision in the bill is problematic--acknowledging in effect (and, in Kaus's case, in so many words) that Palin had a point.

—"Palin Wins," Wall Street Journal, August 14, 2009

Although anyone can send an e-mail or write a letter, professional lobbyists and interest groups tend to drown out the voices of John and Jane Q. Public. Elected officials can become isolated in their Greek-columned worlds, especially in Washington, D.C. They have numerous procedural and security methods for preserving order at town hall meetings without stifling public comment. This face-to-face conduit between constituents and representatives is still needed in our republic, if we are to keep it.

Obama: stock market "like a tracking poll"

Allan Meltzer, an economist teaching at Carnegie Mellon University, refuted Mr. Obama's characterization of the market as fluctuating.

"The stock market has not been 'up and down' since January 20. It is mostly down substantially. And it falls especially on days when the administration announces its plans and proposals. A wise president would not dismiss this vote of no confidence," Mr. Meltzer said.

"The administration and the Congress propose to redistribute a large share of income from upper to middle- and lower-income groups. They have set off a race between the tax rate, the inflation rate, and controls. I believe all three will win the race."

—"Obama urges investors to be patient; refuses to react to 'investor class'" by Jon Ward, Washington Times, March 4, 2009

Pelosi, Obama, and Scrooge

News item: Democrat "economic stimulus" bill would fund Planned Parenthood, contraception, abortion.

"Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those — one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government." —Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA8)

"The first thing I‘d do, as president, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act." —Then Presidential candidate Barack Obama, July 2007

"If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." —Ebenezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Content of their character, or...?

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream," speech at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963

"Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back; when brown can stick around; when yellow will be mellow; when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right." —Rev. Joseph Lowery, Barack Obama inaugural benediction, January 20, 2009

In forty years, we've gone from The March On Washington to Change Comes To Washington, yet some would still fixate on racial groups rather than the character of the individual. Shouldn't all Americans embrace what is right? Don't most Americans already do so?

UPDATE: Juan Williams is thinking along the same lines today.

Hate mongers

The mainstream media and lefty blogs have focused during the current news cycle about those angry, dare we say "hateful," Republicans at John McCain's last two rallies in Waukesha, Wisconsin and Lakeville, Minnesota.

Polinaut's Tom Scheck titled his blog post on the Lakeville rally, "Out for blood..." At least he exercised some typographic restraint: it could have been OUT FOR BLOOD!!

The crowd at John McCain's townhall meeting in Lakeville was, shall we say, a bit partisan. Some called for McCain to fight Obama at next Wednesday's rally. Another woman said she didn't trust him because he was an Arab. Another said they didn't know if they could live in a country that had Barack Obama as its president.

Helpfully, Sheck also posted the full audio of the town hall, from McCain's entrance to his closing remarks. The audio reveals that the crowd at the suburban Lakeville South High School sounded more like Minnesota Nice than "out for blood." Unreported was the crowd's applause when McCain corrected the ignorant characterization of Obama as an "Arab."

Yet Sheck was mild compared to Bob von Sternberg in the financially troubled Star Tribune. In Sternberg's version of the story, "In Lakeville, McCain tamps down hostility," McCain was "Struggling to contain an emotional fire his own campaign kindled."

Shocking reports of "hate" and "anger" (or even partisanship) were curiously missing from media coverage of anarchist "demonstrations of free speech," in which real damage was done to property and persons peaceably assembled for the Republican National Convention. Pheisty and Michelle Malkin have documented other recent examples of liberal hate speech (viewer discretion advised).

The McCain rally reports hype a few exceptional comments but fail to further understanding about how Midwestern grassroots activists feel about issues like socialism, the economy, and the right to life. Intentionally or not, they serve Obama's campaign by stereotyping conservatives and attempting to demoralize the Republican base. Don't fall for it.

Some of the passion shown at the rallies is directed at the McCain campaign as the game clock winds down with our team down by a field goal. We have the better ideas and the better candidate, so let's score a touchdown and win this game, Senator.

Lewis, Bachmann voice conservative angst

On Wednesday's Jason Lewis Show (100.3 KTLK-FM), Lewis, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN6), and several callers expressed their frustration at John McCain's lack of walking the conservative walk.

After pledging as president to veto any bill that contains earmarks, McCain voted (with Barack Obama) in favor of the $800 billion lender bail-out bill, which one caller called "the mother of all earmark bills."

In March, the New York Times reported, "McCain Rejects Broad U.S. Aid on Mortgages." At Tuesday's town-hall debate, McCain proposed a $300 billion government mortgage buyout plan. Even Obama called the plan "costly and out of touch."

Bachmann said that she was almost "breaking pencils" during the debate as McCain passed up several golden opportunities to make the conservative case against Obama's liberal positions.

As McCain runs toward the middle, he is running away from the conservative base of the Republican party — you know, the likely voters who man the phone banks, drop literature, pound lawn signs. When he announced Sarah Palin as his running mate, and Palin made her national debut in Saint Paul last month, McCain enjoyed a post-convention bump in poll numbers, fundraising, and volunteer enthusiasm. Post bail-out, McCain's poll numbers are sagging along with grassroots morale. It will be interesting to see how many show up to McCain's (Palin-less) Lakeville town hall meeting on Friday.

Conservatives are afraid that "change is coming," alright: socialism, regardless of who wins in November.

Lewis urged frustrated conservatives to redouble their efforts to support solid conservatives down-ticket, to rebuild the Republican party from the grassroots up. One caller speculated about a Palin-Bachmann ticket in 2012.

American graffiti

Here is the situation on Vicksburg Lane in Plymouth. Nearby Obama and other Democrat candidate signs were untouched.


The taggers missed this one on the same property (no, I don't know where you can buy these signs, but let me know if you find the vendor):

Another Democrat for McCain-Palin

Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter and member of the Democratic National Committee's Platform Committee has joined the long and growing roster of Democrats and independents supporting John McCain for President.

"In an election as important as this, we must choose the candidate who has a proven record of bipartisanship and reforming government, and that's John McCain," Rothschild said in a press release coinciding with the Wednesday announcement from Arlington, Virginia.

"We can't afford a president who lacks experience and judgment and has never crossed party lines to work for meaningful reform," continued Rothschild. "Amid tough economic times and foreign policy concerns, we need someone who is ready to lead. Although I am a Democrat, I recognize that it's more important to put country ahead of party and that's why I support John McCain."

During the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, several other prominent McCain Democrats held a press conference to discuss their reasons for supporting the McCain-Palin ticket, including:

• John Coale, former fundraiser for President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY)
• Jennifer Lee, member of Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in California
• Silver Salazar, Hispanic community leader and former supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton for president
• Cynthia Ruccia, former Congressional candidate from Ohio and women's rights activist
• Brian Golden, former state representative fro Boston and lifelong Democrat
• Ambassador Mark Erwin, appointed ambassador to OPIC by President Clinton

Biden bypasses McCain to insult Republicans

The Democrat/liberal/leftist weapon of choice is the ad hominem attack. When they don't have a better idea, they attack the candidate personally. Tina Fey's relatively gentle parody of Sarah Palin on last week's Saturday Night Live ("I can see Russia from my house") is only the beginning.

Democrat vice presidential candidate Joe Biden took this to a whole new level, bypassing John McCain and instead insulting Republicans in general during his speech in Flat Rock, Michigan on Monday:

The Republican party and some of the blogs and others on the far right, are trying very hard to paint a picture of this man [Sen. Barack Obama], they're trying the best as they can to mischaracterize who he is and what he stands for.

All this stuff about how different Barack Obama is, they're not just used to somebody really smart. They're just not used to somebody who’s really well educated. They just don't know quite how to handle it. Cause if he's as smart as Barack is he must not be from my neighborhood.

If I voted for an elite Washington insider who actually thinks like this, I would surely get the government I deserved.

Why the left isn't right

The far left that has taken over the Democrat party thinks that Jesus was a "community organizer," Barak Obama is the Messiah, global warming is the Gospel, and abortion is a sacrament.

Grandma Got Run Over by Obama

"I can no more disown [Jeremiah Wright] than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." —Barack Obama

I am one of those (probably rare) persons who purposely listens to those 24/7 Christmas music radio stations, from Thanksgiving to New Year's, and enjoys it. So of course I just can't get this song out of my head...

Grandma Got Run Over by Obama*

Grandma got run over by Obama
Just so Barack could gain on Hillary
You can't believe he'd stoop low for endorsement
But as for me and Grandpa, we believe.

It began with Barack's "change" call
It gave him a big poll boost
Oprah helped him fill each grange hall
Then Reverend Wright's chickens came home to roost.
(Home to roost!)

Suddenly "black" was an issue
A speech on race he had to write
He told a story 'bout his Grandma
And became a politician overnight.

Grandma got run over by Obama
Just so Barack could gain on Hillary
You can't believe he'd stoop low for endorsement
But as for me and Grandpa, we believe.

The Dems know how to divide folks
Men and women, black and white
But what happens when they're both in the same party
And they're on the left instead of on the right?
(On the right!)

Now there's talk of an '08 "dream team"
To make peace 'tween rival groups
But who's on top and who's veep is the question
On the minds of Dem bigwigs and their ground troops.

Grandma got run over by Obama
Just so Barack could gain on Hillary
You can't believe he'd stoop low for endorsement
But as for me and Grandpa, we believe.

*Sung to the tune of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer"