Spend What We Don't Have to Fund What We Can't Afford!

Obama will not do a thing about Iran but he can pressure Netanyahu and continues to do so. By the time Netanyahu negotiates with Abbas he will have little leverage. (See 1 and 1a below.)

Hamas' man behind the scene, Mashaal, rejects Netanyahu's proposals as one would expect. Mashaal knows by remaining opposed to everything Israel seeks the pressure from Obama will mount on Netanyahu to make more concessions. After all, getting a deal signed is politically critical regardless of whether it is good for our former friend. (See 2 and 2a below.)

Karl Rove is a very bright political observer and analyst but I believe he is too optimistic when it comes to Obama's health care initiatives faltering. Democrats love passing laws and dispensing goodies. By spending money we don't have, to fund programs we can't afford places Democrats in the perfect position of raising taxes and expanding government's intrusion into every nook and cranny of life and that is something they lust at doing. (See 3 and 5 below.)

Caroline Glick suggests the divide between Israelis and American Jews, regarding support of Israel, has widened.

Most American Jews are liberal and, unless Israel's very existence is imminently threatened, their loyalty is to their party's president. Furthermore, I suspect most liberal American Jews have become tired of "active" support of Israel which would make them vulnerable to criticism because they have bought into the growing and constant bashing emanating from the press and media elite that Israel is an intransigent occupier and bully. Most American Jews are urbanites, somewhat educated and live in cities where newspapers are predominantly liberal - New York Times, Los Angeles Times, etc..

Most American Jews, being liberal, perhaps feel a greater sense of guilt, sympathy and/or empathy when it comes to minorities and therefore, are not likely to challenge Obama whose heart they want to believe remains in the 'right place.' They delude themselves by citing Obama's Jewish Chief of Staff but ignore Obama's actions, background, associations and speeches.

Most American Jews have never been to Israel. In fact a greater percentage of Congress has been and have come back influenced by their visit and the geography. We live in a vast country and cannot perceive of a nation as small as Israel. Neither is America surrounded by those committed to our extinction. Yes, we are invaded by illegals from Mexico but they come not to destroy our nation but to find work.

Supporting Israel raises the issue of loyalty and that too causes problems among liberal Jews. Another reason for the growing divide is that it is hard to continue supporting the victor against the 'victim' and the Palestinians have done a marvelous job of selling their victimhood to a buying world.

Perhaps, as Glick suggests, a campaign of education will help narrow the exanding gap but I believe the odds favor Obama because he has momentum, is hell bent to force a deal and has demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice principle because 'father knows best.'


Most importantly of all, as Glick points out, most Jews either never embraced Zionism or have forgotten what Zionism sought to do. Therefore, Obama's mischaracterization of his justification of Israel's birth goes right over their heads. If you do not know your history you are not in a strong position to debate an attack on or misrepresentation of it.

And then read the most damning article of all.(See 4 and 4a below.)

The Senate is about to claim a 'partisan' victory by saving us $600 billion and passing a health care bill which will only costs $1 trillion over ten years. No Congressional estimate has ever turned out to be correct or low so you can start by doubling the trillion figure and then, oops we not only did not save $600 billion but also, like in a poker game, got raised $400 billion. But we can afford it because the wealthy are going to foot the bill from their pocket change.

The Baucus bill is short on details, in fact it has none because it is the stuff dreams are made of, but Baucus is delirious over his accomplishments.(See 5 and 5a below.)

As government begins controlling more corporations and their activity it will be interesting to observe whether corporate management, hired by the government, can adapt to the growing spread of pernicious rules and regulations demanded of the private sector. Certainly members of Congress enjoy special privileges unavailable to the governed - even to the extent of health care choices etc.

Take the case of AIG. The government has now converted significant portions of their loans to equity and now control what was once one of the largest publicly traded insurance companies. Government already controls General Motors and through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dictates what happens in the mortgage lending market and recently Barney sought to ease restrictions on condo lending.

Being the cynic that I am, I suspect, over time, we will find government management will engage in abusive and illegal activities and that goivernment oversight of their own will turn a blind eye and/or be in cahoots. After all Dodd and others recieved sweetheart interest deals from Countrywide whose head will probably go to jail.

Obama has created the perverse condition whereby government is increasingly in bed with itself and is being entrusted to watch itself. What bureaucrat will blow the whistle on its own? Just in the past few weeks it has come to light that Obama is seeking to fire a Justice Department Inspector General who accused one of Obama's Acorn supporters of law violations. This individual was appointed by GW and it is claimed was overzealous in his complaint against the Obama supporter who received improper Acorn funding that has since been repaid.

Oversight has become a function of an adoring and supporting press and media and you know where that will lead us - nowhere. All administration have instances of corruption and self-dealing. I suspect when history is written this one will exceed anything ever dreamed of because of the trillions that are sloshing around in the hands of and under the control of those who now govern.

Paying off constituents is politics at its finest and think about all that Obama owes to unions, the Far Left, (Greens, Acorns and other assorted nuts)and you should begin to get the picture if you even care. (See 6 and 6a below.)

Have a nice weekend and breathe what is left of the free air because soon you will be paying for every breath you take under Cap and Trade.

Dick


1) Netanyahu folds under US pressure for pulling out of West Bank towns before peace talks

Despite his pledge to keep security considerations uppermost in his dealings with the Palestinians, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is buckling under pressure from the US administration aimed at softening Israel up ahead of Middle East peace talks.

This pressure turned Netanyahu's first official visits to Rome and Paris sour.

He had hoped to outmaneuver the Obama administration's insistence on a total settlement freeze by winning the support of friendly Silvio Berlusconi and Nicolas Sarkozy for a compromise formula, which would be presented as a European-Israel deal.

To achieve this, he promised the Italian and French leaders that Israeli forces would soon be pulled out of West Bank Palestinian towns. But he failed to anticipate that the Obama administration would outflank him and get there first. So his arrival in Rome and Paris was preceded by Italian and French officials parroting the Washington line on a settlement freeze, including East Jerusalem

When he met Berlusconi Monday, June 22, the Israeli prime minister saw that he had already talked to Obama on the phone and promised that the Italian boot would toe the American line.

In Paris, he found the same trap had been laid at the Elysee.

In these circumstances, Netanyahu should never have gone through with his visits to Italy and France. And defense minister Ehud Barak should call off his trip to Washington Monday for the interview with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell which the prime minister postponed. He has little hope of persuading the administration to change its tune or head off the impending clash between his administration and the Obama White House.

Netanyahu's promise to the Italian and French leaders to pull the IDF out of the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jericho and Qalqilya, has meanwhile gone on record, for no gain in Rome and/or in Paris. Netanyahu can no longer capitalize on this major concession for a quid pro quo from the Palestinians. The IDF has also been ordered to reduce to the number of checkpoints on the West Bank to 10 active facilities to allow the Palestinians to travel from town to town free of holdups for searches – another concession to US demands.

These concessions are tantamount to the handover of the main West Bank towns to Palestinian security control.

It is the most sweeping redeployment of Israeli security forces since their unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria four years ago as part of Ariel Sharon's disengagement policy.

To make the gesture palatable to the Israeli public - who have not forgottenthat years of Palestinian suicide bombing attacks from the West Bank were finally stemmed by the IDF presence in terrorist city strongholds - Netanyahu told the army spokesman to announce Thursday, June 25, that the measures were being given a one-week trial run before being finalized.

However, once in place, these measures will be practically impossible to withdraw.

The Obama administration has thus cornered the Netanyahu government into giving away valuable assets to the Palestinians before negotiations have even begun. This diplomatic dexterity has not been displayed in Washington's dealings with Iran.


1a) U.S. praises Israel for easing West Bank restrictions
By Natasha Mozgavaya


In an apparent effort to ease tensions that have been aired publicly through the press, the U.S. State Department on Thursday praised Israel's lifting of restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank.

State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly said the U.S. was appreciative of Israel's "positive steps" in easing Palestinian freedom of movement in the territories.

Relations between Israel and the United States have been strained in recent weeks over Washington's demand that the Netanyahu government declare a total freeze on all settlement construction in the West Bank.

A Paris meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama's envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, was canceled earlier this week after it became clear that the two sides would not be able to bridge the gaps on the settlement issue.

Netanyahu announced earlier this week that he would dispatch his defense minister, Ehud Barak, to Washington in an effort to reach a compromise with American officials on the settlements issue.

Israel plans to limit military operations in four Palestinian cities to try to boost a Palestinian security campaign supported by Washington, Israeli and Western security sources said on Thursday.

The move coincided with attempts by Netanyahu to persuade Obama to soften his demand for a total freeze in settlement building in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israeli and Western sources said the Israel Defense Forces would refrain from entering Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jericho and Qalqilya, except in cases where the army believed Palestinian militants were poised to attack Israelis. The move stops short of a full withdrawal from these towns.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced yesterday that the Israeli authorities had somewhat eased travel restrictions for Palestinians to and from four cities in the West Bank: Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus and Qalqilyah.

However OCHA also said that the Israel Defense Forces claim that there are only 16 manned roadblocks in the West Bank is incorrect. According to OCHA there are 69 manned roadblocks

2) Mashaal rejects idea of demilitarized Palestine as 'pathetic'
By Ali Waked


Exiled Hamas politburo chief responds to Obama, Netanyahu speeches, says Palestinians 'reject Israel's position on the refugees, Jerusalem, and the Jewish state.' Gilad Shalit will only be released as part of 'a serious deal'

Hamas' senior political leader Khaled Mashaal said on Thursday that his organization is willing to cooperate with any international effort to end the occupation but would never accept the notion of a demilitarized Palestinian state.


"The Palestinian people reject the Israeli position on a demilitarized state, on the refugees, on Jerusalem, and on the Jewish state," the exiled Mashaal said in Damascus, referring to Israel's demand any future Palestinian state recognize it as a Jewish nation.

"A demilitarized state is a pathetic state, not a serious national entity. The Palestinians will not accept Jerusalem as a unified city under Jewish control," said Mashaal, adding that the Palestinians were dedicated to returning the refugees to their homes. Recognizing Israel as a Jewish state "would erase the right of return to lands taken in 1948."

Mashaal also spoke of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. "Netanyahu's only chance to free the soldier is through a serious prisoner exchange agreement," said Mashaal. "So far Israel's stubbornness has derailed the indirect negotiations and most of the other efforts in past years. We will continue to do everything to free the prisoners. Hamas is committed to freeing all 12,000 prisoners."


'Obama's speech – good, but not enough'
Mashaal called US President Barack Obama's demand that Israel freeze all construction in the settlements "positive, but not enough." The Hamas leader said: "The times have changed – Israel can no longer defeat our people and our nations. It has failed in its Nazi war on Gaza just as it failed in Lebanon. This is the result of the resistance, not negotiations that only mask the face of the occupation."


Mashaal addressed Obama directly, saying the Palestinian people "has experienced every form of oppression, suffering and injustice." He expressed his appreciation of the new administration's attitude towards Hamas, calling it a step in the right direction.


Mashaal also called for and end to the blockade imposed on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and its rebuilding.


"President Obama uses new language, but we expect real pressure on the Israelis. There are demands to freeze the settlements, but that is not the price we want, even if it is a necessary step."

Mashaal said the West "is to blame for Israel's extremism."


He urged the warring Palestinian factions to reconcile and unite, he said such a reconciliation has not been reached yet because of the Palestinian Authority's "persecution of the resistance."



Israeli and Palestinian security forces loyal to the PA have boosted cooperation in the West Bank over the course of the past year, and Israel has praised the Palestinian troops' ability to thwart terror attacks and dismantle terror infrastructure, mostly belonging to Islamic Jihad but also Hamas.

2a) Arab hearts & minds

Another day, another massacre in Iraq. Sunni fanatics bombed a Baghdad street market on Thursday, slaughtering 70 Shi'ites. The latest bloodletting comes just as 133,000 US combat forces are to be withdrawn from Iraqi population centers, on Tuesday. The troops will be out of the country altogether in two years.

While world attention has been focused on Iran, Iraqis have continued to kill each other and Americans. In Mosul, the coach of the national karate team was killed; a spate of violence earlier in the week claimed dozens of victims in Baghdad. A truck-bombing in Kirkuk on Saturday took 70 lives. Nor is the situation stable even in Fallujah, pacified at great cost in American lives and treasure.

The Sunnis responsible for recent attacks are mostly locals, not jihadis from abroad, and American intelligence believes that the chances of renewed sectarian warfare are receding. The official US line is that the war in Iraq is winding down and American forces there will be reassigned to Afghanistan.

US DEFENSE Secretary Robert Gates called on a Washington gathering of top military officers from friendly Arab countries to help stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that Washington's overtures to Iran notwithstanding, America would stick by its Arab allies.

America's dependency on imported petroleum, along with other geostrategic considerations, makes the need for good relations with the Arabs perfectly understandable. Still, isn't the administration curious about why it must work so hard to convince them to do what is in their own interest? After all, were Iraq (with its Shi'ite Arab majority) to fall completely into Iran's (Persian Shi'ite) orbit, this would be a bad thing for the predominantly Sunni Arab states. Likewise, a nuclear-armed Iran would most immediately threaten the Arabs.

On Thursday, Jerusalem Post diplomatic reporter Herb Keinon analyzed the approach Washington has been taking to bolster its credentials with the Arabs. By driving the settlement issue to the forefront, wrote Keinon, President Barack Obama has, paradoxically, made it next to impossible to resume Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

The Palestinians insist they will not negotiate without a settlement freeze. And the Obama administration seems to have bought the assertion, reiterated at Wednesday's Arab League meeting in Cairo, that if only Jewish life over the Green Line was placed in suspended animation, Palestinian moderates would make a dash for peace.

There are some 550,000 Jews living beyond the Green Line: 300,000 in 120 communities in Judea and Samaria, the rest in metro-Jerusalem. Notwithstanding the shared Israeli and American desire to create a climate conducive to productive negotiations, it makes little sense to many Israelis that the US is demanding a freeze inside the strategic settlement blocs Israel is consensually insistent on retaining, and the extension of that demand to Jewish neighborhoods in post-'67 Jerusalem is still more problematic. Furthermore, all Israeli communities on the Palestinian side of a permanently agreed border would be relocated under the terms of a final status deal.

We suspect the Palestinians do not want to negotiate in good faith - otherwise why did they reject an offer by Ehud Olmert that would have given them the equivalent of 100 percent of the West Bank, plus Israel's agreement to international oversight of Jerusalem's holy basin? And why is Mahmoud Abbas still insisting on Israel agreeing to absorb millions of Palestinian "refugees" - thereby asking us to commit demographic suicide?

In Jordan this week, Saeb Erekat crowed that it was Palestinian negotiating obstinacy that had impelled Olmert's generous offer. The longer we hold out, he said, the better the offers get. In that context, American pressure for a complete Israeli settlement freeze seems likely to deepen Palestinian obduracy, not reduce it.

Fixating on settlements gladdens Arab hearts, no doubt. It will not, however, bring stability to Fallujah or Kabul.

What will? Perhaps a sense of certainty that America will not waver in its determination to lead. Even then, though, Arab collaboration on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran will still be influenced by factors beyond Washington's control, such as the internecine struggle between Islamists and relative modernizers.

When the Arabs study Washington's handling of Iran's post-election upheaval, or how it's responding to the mullahs' quest for atomic weapons and to North Korea's brinkmanship, will they take heart from Obama's commitment to multilateralism and his dexterous employment of soft power and suasion? Or will they, looking at the results, hedge their bets and disingenuously attribute their vacillation to Jewish settlements on the West Bank?

3) ObamaCare Costs Money--And Personal Freedom
By KARL ROVE


While still good, President Barack Obama's political health is deteriorating, threatened by what he thought would be balm -- his ambitious plan for a government takeover of health care.

Mr. Obama remains slightly more popular than most presidents have been in their opening months. But his job approval rating has drifted down to 60% in the RealClearPolitics.com average. His disapproval numbers have nearly doubled to 33%.

More troubling to Team Obama is the growing gap between the president's approval rating and declining support for major items on his policy agenda. Independents are increasingly joining Republicans in opposition to administration initiatives that range from reviving the economy to closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo.


Things will likely get worse in the coming months as the congressional stage comes to be dominated by health care. A new poll by Resurgent Republic (a nonprofit, right-of-center education organization whose creation I helped spur), reveals some of the president's challenges. By a 60%-to-31% margin, Americans prefer getting their health coverage through private insurance rather than the federal government.

Mr. Obama's record-setting spending binge has also made Americans more sensitive to deficits and higher taxes. Thirty-nine percent said they supported "a health-care plan that raises taxes in order to provide health insurance to all Americans," while 52% preferred "a plan that does not provide health insurance to all Americans but keeps taxes at current levels." By a 58%-to-37% margin, American prefer reforming health care "without raising taxes or increasing the deficit" to government investing "new resources to make sure it is done right."

This is why Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus blanched when committee staffers priced his -- which is also the Obama administration's -- draft legislation at a cool $1.6 trillion over the next decade.

The federal government will release an update on the deficit in mid-July, which will likely increase the public's fear of deficit spending. The current fiscal year's $1.8 trillion deficit is likely to grow significantly.


There is some good news in the Resurgent Republic poll for Mr. Obama if he can sell his plan as shifting power from "insurance bureaucrats to consumers." Resurgent's poll found that Americans favor that by 57% to 38%.

But to argue, as Mr. Obama does, that a government-run health-care plan can control costs better than a market-based system is a mistake. This argument is belied by Medicare's experience. A study published by the Pacific Research Institute finds that since 1970 Medicare's costs have risen 34% a year faster than the rest of health care.

Mr. Obama's trashing of American health care as "a broken system" that must be brought "into the 21st century" doesn't resonate with most Americans. They are happy about their health care, doctor and hospital. Resurgent's poll found that 83% of Americans are very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of care they and their families receive.

Nearly everyone agrees that some reforms are needed. But it is also vital to protect areas of excellence and innovation. Stanford University professor Scott Atlas points out that from 1998 to 2002 nearly twice as many new drugs were launched in the U.S. as in Europe. According the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry Report, some 2,900 new drugs are now being researched here. America's five top hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country, according to Mr. Atlas. And a McKinsey Co. study reports that 40% of all medical travelers come to the United States for medical treatment.

Transforming health care into a government-run system would be difficult to do under any circumstances. Americans are still wary about big government. Health-care reform also always sounds better in the abstract. Public resistance rises once liberals are forced to release the details of their plans.

Meanwhile, the $787 billion stimulus package has not provided the economic kick Mr. Obama promised. The $410 billion Omnibus spending bill the president signed in March and his $3.5 trillion budget plan for next year are also adding to the river of red ink.

Health-care reform was said to be "inevitable" a few months ago. Today, its prospects are less certain, even to Democrats. The issue may even turn out to be a millstone for the party.

Americans are increasingly concerned about the cost -- in money and personal freedom -- of Mr. Obama's nanny-state initiatives. To strengthen the emerging coalition of independents and Republicans, the GOP must fight Mr. Obama's agenda with reasoned arguments and attractive alternatives. Health care may actually be an issue that helps resurrect the GOP.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

4) Have Israelis and U.S. Jews Parted Company?
By Caroline B. Glick


Have American Jews abandoned Israel in favor of President Obama? This is acentral question in the minds of Israelis today.

In a poll of Israeli Jews conducted in mid-June by the Jerusalem Post, a mere 6 percent of respondents said they view Obama as pro-Israel. In stark contrast, a Gallup tracking poll in early May showed that 79 percent of American Jews support the president.

These numbers seem to tell us that U.S. Jews have indeed parted company with the Jewish state.

No American president has ever been viewed as similarly ill disposed toward Israel by Israelis. With only 6 percent seeing the administration as friendly, it is apparent that distrust of Obama is not a partisan issue in Israel. It spans the spectrum from far left to right, from ultra-Orthodox to ultra-secular. But with his 79-percent approval rating among U.S. Jews, it is clear the American Jewish community is quite sympathetically inclined
toward Obama.

Appearances of course can be deceptive. And it is worth taking a closer look at the numbers to understand what they tell us about American Jewish sentiments regarding Obama and Israel. First, however, we should consider what it is about Obama that makes nearly all Israeli Jews view him as an adversary.

The Jerusalem Post poll showed a massive divergence between Israeli Jews and Obama on the issue of Jewish building beyond the 1949 armistice line. The Obama administration has refused to budge in its hard-line demand that Israel end all Jewish building in north, south, and east Jerusalem as well as in Judea and Samaria.

For its part, the Netanyahu government has refused to bow to this demand. Seventy percent of Israeli Jews support the Netanyahu government's handling of the issue with the Obama administration and 69 percent oppose a freeze on Jewish building.

Beyond Obama's agitation on the issue of Jewish construction, Israelis are dismayed by what they perceive as the generally hostile approach he has adopted in dealing with the Jewish state. This approach was nowhere more in evidence than in his speech to the Islamic world in Cairo on June 4.

It wasn't just Obama's comparison of Palestinian terrorism to the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, the American civil rights movement and antebellum slave rebellions that set people off. There was also Obama's inference that Israel owes its legitimacy to the Holocaust.

It is that claim - Obama repeated it during his visit to Buchenwald - which forms the basis of the Islamic narrative against Israel. It argues that Jews are not indigenous to the Middle East, and that the only thing keeping Israel in place is European guilt about Auschwitz. Not only do Israelis of all political stripes reject this as factually false, they recognize it is inherently anti-Semitic because it ignores and negates 3,500 years of Jewish history in the land of Israel.

With Israeli distrust of Obama so apparent, and so easily explained, two questions arise: How has Obama managed to maintain American Jewish support despite his unprecedented unpopularity in Israel? And what is the likelihood that when push comes to shove, American Jews will stand with Israel against the president they so admire?

Obama's great success in maintaining support among American Jews owes much to the fact that most American Jews do not pick up the same messages from Obama's statements as do Israeli Jews. Whereas Israeli Jews recognize that it is morally obscene, strategically suicidal and historically inaccurate to suggest that Israel has no rights to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and that Jews have no right to live there, American Jews do not intuitively understand this to be the case. Consequently, while Israeli Jews recognize Obama's calls for a total freeze in Jewish construction in these areas as inherently hostile, most American Jews do not.

Beyond this, for the past 15 years, Holocaust education - more so than Zionist education or Jewish religious education - has become the hallmark of American Jewish identity. As a consequence, American Jews may not see anything objectionable in Obama's inference that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust.

If the divergence in U.S. Jewish and Israeli attitudes toward Obama is simply a consequence of a lack of American Jewish awareness of the significance of Obama's positions and policies for Israel, then the disparity in views can be easily remedied by a sustained issues awareness campaign by Israel and by American Jewish organizations. For many of Israel's core American Jewish supporters, such a campaign would no doubt go a long way in energizing them to challenge the administration on its positions vis-à-vis Israel.

But there are other factors at work. According to the American Jewish Committee's 2008 survey of American Jews, some 67 percent of American Jews feel close to Israel. These numbers, while high, are not significantly higher than similar support levels among the general U.S. population. (A survey of general American sentiment toward Israel conducted this month by the Israel Project shows that support for Israel has dropped by 20 percent in the past nine months - from 69 to 49 percent. Presumably, Jewish American support for Israel has also experienced a drop.)

More significantly, the AJC survey showed that in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential elections, only three percent of American Jews said a candidate's position on Israel was the most important issue for them. Indeed, according to survey after survey of American Jewish opinion over the past decade, U.S. Jewish support for Israel, while widespread, is not
particularly deep. This sentiment lends to the conclusion that American Jews will not abandon or temper their support for Obama simply because he is perceived as being hostile to Israel.

The picture, then, is a mixed bag. Support for Israel against Obama will likely rise as a consequence of a sustained educational campaign among American Jews about the issues in dispute and their importance for Israel's security and national well-being. But even in that event, it is unclear how dramatic the shift would be. Given the shallowness of U.S. Jewish support for Israel, no doubt many American Jews will not care enough to reassess
their positions on either Israel or Obama.

The one bit of encouraging news in all this is the persistence of support for Israel relative to Palestinians among rank and file Americans. Palestinians are supported by a mere five percent of Americans.

No doubt it is this disparity that is motivating leading Democratic politicians - most recently Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey - to publicly distance themselves from the administration's Mideast policies.

If U.S. Jewish leaders and pro-Israel activists can educate just a fraction of the American Jewish community, and motivate them to stand with Israel in a significant way against administration pressure, this will likely motivate still more lawmakers and politicians from both parties to maintain support for Israel against the administration. Certainly it will help convince Israelis we haven't been abandoned by American Jewry. And that in itself
would be no mean achievement.

Caroline Glick is senior contributing editor at The Jerusalem Post. Her
Jewish Press-exclusive column appears the last week of each month. Her book
"The Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad," is available at
Amazon.com.

4a) The 'Rape' of Israel
By Moshe Dann

Two years ago, Haaretz 's chief editor David Landau advised US Sec of State Condoleezza Rice to "rape Israel," to force it into making concessions. Rice tried to follow Landau's suggestion, but her efforts were not matched by her boss, President Bush. Now, that policy seems to be led by President Obama himself.


Assisted by Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Dennis Ross, Dan Kurtzer, and others, Pres Obama seems intent on taking Israel down. In addition to the usual left wing Jewish organizations, the Reform Movement's PAC, Americans for Peace Now, a collection of marginal anti-Israel organizations have also lined up for the gang rape.


The analogy is appropriate: A stronger power forces his will upon a weaker victim regardless of what is fair, moral, and without any concern for the trauma he inflicts. The rapist (in this analogy) does what he thinks is good for himself. He wants what he wants.


When rape occurs in a family situation the rapist is often aided and abetted by a family member, often the wife/mother, either to please the rapist, or - in denial - to pretend that it wasn't happening, or carelessness bordering on neglect. That a family member is involved in the rape makes the act even more traumatic, since it involves the ultimate betrayal.


President Obama and his Jewish (and some Israeli) facilitators may believe that what they are doing is for Israel's own good. That might be acceptable if they explained how it works. Would a second Arab Palestinian state run by terrorists enhance Israel's security, promote peace with Israel and in the region, resolve the issues of Jerusalem, and millions of "Palestinian refugees"? Would the Palestinians and Arab states recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, and acknowledge facts of Jewish and world history? Would the proposed state include Jews with full rights, as Israel includes Arabs with full rights?


Nowhere in Obama's agenda are these questions raised or answered. Nowhere is there a hint of how his plan will be carried out, nor concern for what might happen if things don't go according to his visions. That's understandable, since his policy, like sexual aggression, is single minded.


His Jewish and Israeli enablers, like family members who participate in rapes, no doubt believe that what they are doing is in the name of Love. They might even argue that rape is better than murder, that forcing Israel to surrender and survive, albeit crippled and more vulnerable, is preferable to isolation, attack and invasion.


Raping Israel might be convenient for some, temporarily, even a perverted rescue from more dire consequences that would assuage any feelings of guilt. As long as the victim remains alive and available, however, the rapist will return. There's nothing like conquest to whet the appetite for more.


Finally, the most difficult aspect of rape is when there is compliance, when the victim, because of her fear and desperate need to please and be loved, allows the rape to occur. Many Israeli politicians and pundits believe that Israel's survival depends on American and international good will. They will do anything to achieve it, including denying national interests and integrity. Battered by accusations of causing humiliation, suffering and oppression, "the occupation," they surrender. Hungry for acceptance and temporary security, they acquiesce.


For those whose "wet dream" (as Landau described it to Rice) is the destruction of Jewish homes and communities "in order to advance 'the peace process,' " to reward Arab terrorists with a state of their own, the consummation of rape may satisfy them for a while; it's no consolation for those being violated, nor will it prevent the next savagery.


The author, a former asst professor of History, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.



5) Senators claim $1 trillion health bill in reach
By ERICA WERNER and DAVID ESPO

Senators working to give President Barack Obama a comprehensive health care overhaul said Thursday they had figured out how to pare back the complex legislation to keep costs from crashing through a $1 trillion, 10-year ceiling.

The announcement from Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and other lawmakers amounted to a small, parting gift to Obama on his top domestic priority as Congress prepares to leave town for its week long July 4 recess. It moved Congress a bit closer to a deal on legislation to lower costs and provide coverage to nearly 50 million Americans who lack it.

It also capped two weeks of tough going for health care negotiations on Capitol Hill as price tags as high as $1.6 trillion over 10 years sent senators back to the drawing board and forced deadlines to be repeatedly reset.

"We have options that would enable us to write a $1 trillion bill, fully paid for," Baucus said at a news conference.

Baucus declined to detail how the costs were being cut, but options included difficult sacrifices like potentially delaying an expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor.

Others have said the changes made in recent days would lower the cost of government subsidies for those who cannot afford insurance, as well as pare back a planned 10-year series of rate increases for doctors serving Medicare patients.

Aides said the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that the elements under consideration would extend coverage to 97 percent of the population, excluding illegal immigrants.

But even Democrats acknowledged that Thursday's announcement fell fae short of a final deal on legislation to meet Obama's goals.

"There's not a final bill that's agreed to. What there is now is a clear path to having a bill that is paid for," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., one of seven Republican and Democratic Finance Committee senators who've been working closely on the deal.

Baucus has dubbed the group "the coalition of the willing." All seven issued a brief, joint statement later Thursday claiming progress, even though some Republicans involved made no secret of their skepticism.

"We have not seen language (of legislation) in any way shape or form," said Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. He questioned how costs could be cut before bill language was written, calling it "gimmickry."

The Finance Committee had hoped to pass a bill by now, but given the setbacks of recent weeks Thursday's announcement was seen as progress. Of the five House and Senate panels writing health care bills, Finance is the only one with a real chance of producing a bipartisan bill, something Obama has repeatedly said he wants.

The committee will resume work when lawmakers return to Washington after July 4. On Thursday they discussed whether to give more power to MedPAC, a commission that makes recommendations to Congress on Medicare payment rates, Baucus said.

The House also will continue work on a partisan bill that embraces Democratic priorities, and similar legislation is taking shape in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Health Committee lawmakers Thursday defeated an amendment offered by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would have allowed cheaper prescription drugs to be imported from Canada.

All the bills envision new requirements for all Americans to have health insurance, and prohibitions against insurance companies denying people care.

Still unsettled are the divisive questions of whether to create a new public plan to compete against private insurers, and what types of requirements employers should face to offer coverage to their workers.

Across from the Capitol on Thursday, hundreds of people, including actress Edie Falco, rallied for a health care overhaul.

Organizing for America, Obama's political operation within the Democratic National Committee, plans thousands of service events around the country Saturday aimed at building support for health care overhaul among a restive public wary of higher costs, lower quality and a giant price tag.

5a) Health Care Faces the 'R' Word
By Michael Kinsley



Even though more and more Americans have no health insurance at all, Americans consider health care to be a right. Not just that: We consider the best possible health care to be a right. Few would find it acceptable for a poor person to die of a medically curable disease for lack of money. Even fewer would find it acceptable that they themselves should die because the system won't spend the money to cure them. This is all in theory, of course. In practice, people die all the time because some effective treatment is too expensive. But whenever an issue gets drawn into the political system and becomes explicit, it becomes harder. That is what health-care reform will do to the question of rationing.

The Obama administration believes that health care can be made cheaper without any reduction in quality. It has evidence to back this up. According to the famous Dartmouth studies, health care costs two or three times as much per person in some places in America as it does in others, with no measurable difference in results. Atul Gawande's deservedly admired recent essay in the New Yorker makes a similar point. So in theory it's easy: Just figure out how the cheap places do it and apply this knowledge to bring down the cost in the pricier places.

But that doesn't mean rationing will be easy to avoid. Statistics on life expectancy or infant mortality are averages. The easiest way to raise your averages -- maybe even the best way, if we're being honest -- is to concentrate on the general level of care and not to squander a lot on long-odds cases. But if the long-odds case is you or a family member, you may well feel differently.

In the debate about how to reform health care, "how" means two different things. One is the industry structure: Should we simply nationalize the whole system or set up a government alternative to operate alongside the private one? Or are there novel market-based alternatives that ought to be tried? Gawande thinks the problem is a culture of medicine that has become too greedy. Others believe that human greed is a given and that either the government or the market will have to do a better job of controlling it. The other "how" is how the actual course of treatment for patients will change. Here there is much less to debate. Cheaper treatment means less treatment: fewer tests, fewer surgeries, fewer drugs.

Less care doesn't necessarily mean worse care. The administration is investing great hopes (and $1.1 billion of stimulus money) in "comparative effectiveness research." Because we don't collect and compare in any systematic way the vast piles of data we have about individual patients and their treatment, we know astonishingly little about which treatments work and which are a waste of money. The administration is touting the figure of 30 percent of all health-care costs as spending that may accomplish nothing.

I suspect that what a billion-plus dollars' worth of research will find is that perhaps 30 percent of what we spend on health care is almost entirely worthless, or just barely better than a much cheaper alternative. Or it might be better and no one knows for sure. Denying someone these treatments or tests is rationing.

Similarly, when fear of malpractice lawsuits leads doctors to practice "defensive medicine" -- a legitimate complaint about current arrangements -- it doesn't mean that they order worthless tests. It means they order tests with only a very long-shot chance of finding something wrong.

Here is a handy-dandy way to determine whether the failure to order some exam or treatment constitutes rationing: If the patient were the president, would he get it? If he'd get it and you wouldn't, it's rationing.

It may seem absurd to worry about whether wealthy or well-insured people get every last test and exotic or speculative treatment when millions of Americans have no health insurance and millions more have gaping holes in their coverage. But the well-insured happen to include virtually all the people making the key decisions about health-care reform -- members of Congress and their staffs, the White House staff, Washington journalists, and so on. These people's fears that they would lose the right to "choose my own doctor" (code for getting treatment with all the bells and whistles) helped kill Hillary Clinton's attempt to reform health care in the early 1990s. Fear of rationing could kill Obamacare for the same reason.

Whether or not this makes sense is a question of taste, not policy.

David Leonhardt of the New York Times recently noted that spending so much on health care squeezes out spending on other things that we might prefer, and that is a form of rationing. On the other hand, the blogger Mickey Kaus argues that it makes perfect sense for a society growing richer (as ours soon will be again, we hope) to spend a growing share of that wealth on improving our health and longevity.

That is what we do as individuals. And what better to spend your money on?

5b)The Dangers of Fannie Mae Health Care: A public plan would have certain advantages. That's precisely the problem
By JOHN E. CALFEE


President Obama and most congressional Democrats say they want to preserve private health insurance. They also want to add a "public plan" to compete with private insurance plans. Their basic argument is that a public plan would offer needed competition, save money through low administrative costs and zero profits, realize greater economies of scale, and be a superior negotiator of the prices of medical services and technology.


The first three arguments are bogus. The fourth argument is only half-bogus -- but the half that isn't reveals a great danger: If a public plan is inserted into private insurance markets, the American health-care system could rapidly evolve into a single-payer system, which would have devastating effects on R&D for new medical technology.

The first argument, that we need a public plan to spur competition, just isn't plausible. Hundreds of health insurance plans already exist, and employer benefit managers can choose among numerous alternatives. There is no lack of firms willing to compete to provide health insurance.

As to the second argument, what is to be saved by avoiding profits? Nonprofit health insurance firms are common, including many of the Blue Cross-Blue Shield plans. Nonprofit status has not proved to be a reliable source of efficiency and cost-saving. The addition of new nonprofit cooperatives and the like -- as a bipartisan group of senators has proposed -- would make little difference, unless the new plans are given the power to set prices and take on extra risk supported by government subsidies.

Would a public plan have lower administrative costs? Well, how often are public enterprises run more efficiently than private ones? Why did practically all economically advanced nations dismantle their public airlines, phone companies, and so on, invariably obtaining lower administrative costs and consumer prices?

As Stanford University health economist Victor Fuchs has pointed out, what "insurance" firms actually sell to large employers -- which account for the single largest segment of the entire health-care market -- is usually administrative services, not actual insurance. (Large companies are not insured; they pay benefits directly.) There is no reason to expect a Medicare-like public plan to match the administrative efficiency of Aetna, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Cigna, UnitedHealth Group, and WellPoint. Medicare doesn't even try. It outsources most administrative services to the private sector.

Turning to public plans like Medicare and Medicaid for more efficient administration is a fool's errand.

What about economies of scale? Aetna currently serves about 18 million subscribers, UnitedHealth Care serves between 25 million and 30 million, and WellPoint more than 35 million. That is more than is served by the health-care monopoly of Canada (population 33.6 million), and more than the entire health-care systems of most European nations. Once a plan reaches a few million subscribers, there may not be a lot of economies of scale left that can enable public plans to provide lower prices.

Finally, there is the crucial task of negotiating prices for doctors, hospitals, clinics, drugs, devices and thousands of other items essential to modern health care. Here, there are really two arguments for a public plan. The first is about bargaining skill and the firm size, basic ingredients in any negotiating environment.

There is no reason to think the administrators of a public plan will possess skills superior to those honed by private plan personnel during years of negotiations under the pressure of competition. Nor is there any reason to think that mere size would help.

True enough, relatively small European nations routinely obtain better drug prices than are achieved by mammoth American pharmacy benefit managers such as Express Scripts (50 million patients) and Medco (60 million patients), each of whose numbers exceed the entire citizenry of all but the largest European nations. Even sparsely populated New Zealand (population four million) gets better prices than the giant drug-price negotiators in the American private market.

Their success is due to what economists call "monopsony power." Monopsony occurs when a single buyer negotiates prices with several competing sellers (as opposed to monopoly, where there are many buyers but one seller).

Thus, if you want to sell your branded drug in New Zealand, your prices are negotiated with PharMac, a branch of the government. Much the same is true when selling to Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and essentially the entire developed world save the United States. The negotiating power of these government entities results from monopsony, not superior skill.

For example, the various sellers of cholesterol drugs (Lipitor, Crestor, and so on) have to compete with one another while they all face a single government negotiator. If one seller balks at government prices, it leaves competitors to pick up more sales. The same is true for most other drug classes and most medical devices. This uneven battle ensures that negotiated prices will be well below those in a competitive market.

But here is where the huge risks of creating a "public plan" to compete with private insurance firms come into focus. Foremost among these risks are the effects of monopsony power in the purchase of medical technology.

The U.S. is unique because it alone is the source of half of world-wide profits that provide the payoff for the complex, lengthy, and expensive process of developing new treatments. When other nations construct their health-care systems, they ignore the impact of their pricing policies on R&D incentives. As the dominant R&D funding wellhead, we do not have that option.

Competitive markets have generated the prices and the profits necessary to induce a steady flow of medical innovation in this country. A public plan option would tend to dismantle that system. The people in charge will not know how to set reimbursement levels to motivate reasonable R&D efforts, and there is no reason to expect them to try. In public plans, the tried-and-true method is to push the prices of suppliers down until something gives -- too few doctors willing to take on Medicare patients, for example -- and then to ease up. That is a destructive approach to medical technology R&D.

Who knows what drugs will not be developed if reimbursement levels for a new multiple-sclerosis treatment are too measly? In virtually every advanced economy but our own, pricing authorities simply make sure prices are high enough so that existing drugs continue to be made available. We can expect a public plan here to do the same. The inevitable result is to drastically under-incentivize R&D.

This problem would not matter if a public plan remained small -- but it would likely grow into a monster. Monopsony negotiating power will generate lower prices, so many consumers will switch to a public plan. Employers eager to offload health-care costs will also dump unwilling employees into the public plan. That is the basis for the Lewin Group's much-cited prediction that a public plan would come to dominate any market in which it is allowed to compete.

Bargaining power, however, is far from the only potential source of below-market prices for public plans. In the home mortgage market, the public plans -- known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- were for years viewed by investors as less risky because they would be bailed out by the federal government if they took on too much risk. That translated into lower prices (the interest rates paid by borrowers), which eventually translated into extraordinary and unseemly growth, culminating in bankruptcy and a federal bailout.

The lesson for health insurance is clear. All insurance plans -- especially in health-care markets -- have to take on risk. Prudent planning, including the maintenance of reasonable financial reserves, is necessary. That increases costs. It would be all too easy for a public plan to gain a competitive advantage by taking on extra risk while keeping prices low because everyone would expect the federal government to take care of financial surprises down the road.

In sum, a public plan would possess formidable and perhaps overwhelming competitive advantages -- generated not by efficiency but by the artificial advantages of "public" status. This would have two disastrous consequences. The first will be to cause most Americans now covered by private insurance to move to public insurance -- one step away from single-payer health care. The second will be to undermine incentives to develop more of the immensely valuable medical technology that is central to all of health care.

Mr. Calfee is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

6) AIG's Deal: Fed Gets Stakes, Debt Is Cut

Tuesday's Annual Meeting for the Insurer Will Be the First One Under Uncle Sam's Thumb.

American International Group Inc.'s annual meeting on Tuesday will be the first with the U.S. government as the controlling shareholder, but almost certainly not the last.

Many financial firms that took bailout money paid back billions this month. Yet even with the deal announced Thursday to give the Federal Reserve Bank of New York stakes valued at $25billion in two of AIG's foreign life-insurance units -- a move that will reduce AIG's tab -- it remains unclear when or whether taxpayers will be made whole.

Washington is exerting broad influence over AIG as it tries to lay the groundwork ...


6a) When did the lowbrows take over the culture?
By James Lewis

I've been trying to grasp for a truth that is so obvious that all of us know it. But it's not a polite truth, so we don't talk about it. Yet I think it's important to say it out loud, because it is a truth that haunts our national discourse.


As a nation we are under the thumb of idiots. Not just indoctrinated, or wrong-thinking, or power-hungry, or manipulative, or even malevolent people. No, I mean real lowbrows, people who constantly fall for really stupid ideas. Neanderthals. (Look at the Governor of California just running the state budget into the ground. See what I mean? That's not just incompetence. It takes special stupidity, almost a deliberate, willful absence of real thinking.)


The Federal EPA is about to officially declare carbon dioxide to be a pollutant. That's not just false and unscientific; it's not just an excuse for taxing everything in sight, including breathing. It's not merely wrong. It's idiotic. It marks a low point in our national conversation. Scientists or engineers with a grain of sense shouldn't be taking the EPA seriously for a second. Forget the "climate experts," with their grossly inadequate computer models. Normally intelligent people should boggle at the EPA. They are bizarre. Only the truly ignorant could fall for this level of ignorance. Or those who just can't think.


Or look at Obama's unbelievable spending spree. No sane and sensible taxpayer could possibly believe that spending trillions and trillions of dollars on blue-sky fantasies makes any sense at all; the only reason Americans aren't in open rebellion yet is that half of them can't believe it's happening, and the other half are idiots. We haven't seen the effect (yet) on our pocketbooks. There's food in the stores still, and housing has gotten cheaper. But let Obama's budget affect our wallets directly and just watch the voters explode with rage.


The Democrats in Congress are trying desperately to put the brakes on Obama's egomaniacal ambitions because they can see themselves going over the edge in 2010. In a self-respecting, intelligent culture, the Obama budget would be dead on arrival. It's an insult to our national intelligence. (His foreign policy is more of the same.)


Or look at the global warming farce, still hotly pursued by the political classes in Europe and this country, although the Australians seem to be coming to their senses. China now has more millionaires than the UK, because they use all their resources, like coal, to fire their industrial plants. They will never sacrifice a single luxury car to the cap and trade fraud. Neither will India. China and India have been under the thumb of egomaniacal socialists (in the case of India) and communists (in the case of China). They've been there, done that, seen the suffering.


No wonder those Chinese college students fell all over themselves with laughter when Timothy Geithner assured them that Obama would never spend the United States into debt. What an idiot! They laughed because Geithner's stupidity or mendacity was too obvious for words.


That's how we should all react to the miserable frauds who are now in national office. You have to dull your senses with drugs or endless propaganda to fall for it. I've sometimes wondered how many people must have killed off their critical thinking with alcohol and drugs. I know a walking few drug casualties myself, people who just burned out their brains. I'm sure they voted for Obama.


Or maybe there's such a thing as learned stupidity. How else can so many people be so idiotic? Our national IQ has dropped to about 75: Several standard deviations below normal.


Well, we have now voted in a President for the lowbrows. Yes, Obama himself is smart enough; even smart enough to say a few years ago that he didn't feel ready for the presidency. Well, now we can see why he said that. But legions of idiots voted for a man who was plainly unqualified, even by his own estimation, and surrounded by a bunch of malignant sociopaths like Wright and Ayers and all the rest. How could he possibly win? Well, Obama cynically appealed to the idiots -- the young, the stupid, the naive, the silly, the rock idol worshippers, and probably the drug-addled masses, all the lowbrows in the land.


That includes the idiot savants of academia. Academics have a very narrow band of intelligence, something that satirists since Aristophanes have noticed and poked fun at. The first philosopher in Western history was Thales of Elea; Thales featured in Greek folklore as a man who walked around at night gazing at the stars only to fall into a ditch. That's probably a folksy giggle at the absent-minded professor who is constantly bumping into walls. But there's a big element of truth in it. Academics can be incredibly ignorant and dumb outside of their small areas of expertise. Professors and media scribblers generally lack human smarts. They are sure suckers for all the con artists of the day.


Obama is a smooth-talking hustler who has specialized in charming academic liberals, like a smart graduate student who needs to impress his teachers with every word. They just dote on him, like a proud parent smiling on a favorite child. He's their dream, a black man who sounds so smart.


In his press conferences he hypnotizes all the ink-stained wretches of the media. It's a sight to behold. The man swats a fly and the suck-ups of the media go ga-ga with applause, and go back and write articles about it. That's not just a reflection on their (lack of) character and judgment. It's not just their childish immaturity. It's a reflection on their brains, or rather, on all that empty space between their ears. Our media stars are just not very bright. They're idiots. That single fact explains a lot. (And yes, they are also corrupt, easily seduced, haunted by deadlines, decadent in their values, and very prone to mob thinking. But if they had any brains it might be harder to manipulate them like this. The White House just pulls their strings and they dance.)


Obama's 22 White House czars. That's really stupid. As well as a violation of the Constitution. But it's a Chinese laugh line. It's so obviously wrong and power-mad that it's not worth debating.


Legalizing drugs. That's really stupid.


Obama's power-grab over the medical sector of the economy? It's profoundly stupid. We can insure all the uninsured people in the country for a tiny fraction of all that money. We just need to fix the tire on our national car, and this guy tries to sell us a brand-new O-mobile, it can practically fly off the lot, all on credit, long-term payments, no money down. It's gonna be free! So what if you have to mortgage your wife and children? Even if we already have two national lemons in our garage, Medicare and Medicaid, which nobody likes. Now Obee is trying to sell us on a really, really expensive dream mobile that will fix our problems forever, plus it'll be cheaper than what we have now!


Can you believe it?


That sales pitch only works for idiots.


The rise to power and fame of the real lowbrows explains a lot. It even points to an answer of sorts. Because we've all been intimidated by the Cult of Nice not to contradict anybody who comes out with a really stupid, destructive idea. We can no longer call a really stupid idea what it is. I know that I censor myself all the time. We have been taught to keep our mouths shut when a word in time might make a real difference. We have allowed the national conversation to be dumbed down.


Here's my resolution for July Fourth: From now on I'm going to call idiocy idiotic. Not nastily, but as clearly as I can. It is high time for normal, intelligent common sense to become acceptable again. I'm happy to have a respectful argument with anyone who disagrees with me. But I'm going to start saying the magic words:


That's really dumb! That's really ignorant! You haven't thought about that much, have you? Have you ever considered another side of that batty idea?


I promise to be nice.


But honest.


Pass the word.


If we all start doing it we can change the world.