If Good For The Goose, Why Not The Gander? Ticking Off!

The simplest question of all to put to any Member of Congress is: Why are you unwilling to subject yourself to the same health plan you are designing for us?

If it is good for the goose it surely must be for the gander.

If only good for the gander then the goose should be cooked come the next election and replaced.

Government has grown larger and thus, more distant. Our representatives are out of touch. They live in a cocoon, a bubble. Far too often they do not experience the impact of their legislation. They have become a privileged lot and we have allowed it. They are wined, dined and lobbied. Their favor is curried and they even get low cost haircuts. They need to be brought down to earth and served a dose of reality.

They need to put the nation's interests first. Their terms should be limited and serving become less comfortable and profitable.

It will not happen though. Why? Because of the very reasons that have made government so ineffective, ie. too distant, too costly to defeat the incumbent and it takes a mountain of angst to get people stirred.

We will continue to have the best, most corrupt and inattentive government money can and does buy. (See 1 and 1a below.)

I know I 'tick' off a lot of people with my memos, my thoughts and views. Nevertheless, some readers still remain long life friends. To take a line from Paul Newman, whose biography I am reading, I have this to offer un-apologetically: "A man without enemies is a man without character."

My wife honestly believes one day I will be walking down the street and someone will shoot me. I am not worried because most here can't read well. Besides, where we live that could happen at any time because our local schools are a crime and are crime ridden. Our city is infested with dope peddlers, pimps and cocaine happy killers. We have a great Chief of Police but while he is busy trying to do his job local politicians seem more interested in statism and protecting the city's historical charm and tourist image of which there is plenty.

Sometimes what I write is so tongue in cheek even those who agree with me do not get it. I once was accused by a local art dealer, who took me to task in the local paper, because he did not understand what I wrote. What he protested was diametrically the opposite of what he thought I had said. I told him his
mis- interpretation reflected his local education and my wife nearly died on the spot.

Ned Davis' four caution signs - they are being approached but not breeched. Ned Davis is not infallable but he is very good. (See 2 below.)

Another view suggests, it is time for a breather but Donald Luskin is impressed with the market's fortitude in the face of continued 'soft' news. (see 2a below.)

A response to my last memo from a dear friend and fellow memo reader. (See 3 below.)

Lebanese snookered by the Israelis. (See 4 below.)

As I have written time and again, when Liberals have their ideas challenged they go ballistic. They are either unwilling or incapable of debating the issue on its merits and resort to propaganda and smear tactics. No doubt some of the Town Hall meetings get unruly because tempers flare but most attendees are enraged over Obamascare and have become more than willing to express themselves.

Many years ago when Atlanta was hosting the Olympics, the Chairman, Billy Payne, chose to locate the tennis venue in our neighborhood. My neighbors asked me to represent them and we held a meeting in the local church in the hope the atmosphere would help irate attendees to remain cool. One man started cursing and we had to admonish him. The issue involved was our, otherwise, quiet, child friendly and peacful neighborhood being invaded by a tennis venue which could then become a 'rock concert' venue after the Olympics. Billy Payne, to his credit, after hearing from us, relocated the venue in Stone Mountain. It is now being torn down because of inactivity.

Freedom to protest is our Constitutional Right and those who accuse those who protest are acting like "Brown Shirts" are the fascists aka former Gov. Dean. Students and faculty elites who drown out those whose campus views they do not accord with are anti-democratic. When pots call kettles black hypocrisy is alive and well.(See 5 below.)

Dick


1) Dishonesty, Slander, and Idiocy
By Jonah Goldberg

The Democratic party is panicking, lashing out like a cornered animal, all because its effort to take over the health-care industry is coming apart like so much wet toilet paper.

Nancy Pelosi, who will get her own bound volume in the annals of asininity, has outdone herself. When asked by a reporter whether the protests at various town-hall meetings represented legitimate grassroots opposition or were manufactured "AstroTurf" stunts, she replied, "I think they're AstroTurf. You be the judge. They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care."

Now this is a pas de trois of dishonesty, slander, and idiocy. Not only is Pelosi lying when she says protesters are bringing swastikas to these town halls, not only is she suggesting that American citizens are Nazis for having the effrontery to get in the way of Obamacare, but she's also saying that the alleged swastikas are obvious proof that these protests are manufactured by slick P.R. gurus.

How does that work? What public-relations genius says: "Okay, we need these protests to seem like an authentic backlash of real Americans. Make sure everyone has enough Nazi paraphernalia!"

Meanwhile, Sen. Barbara Boxer insists the protests have to be fake because the protesters are too "well-dressed." Likewise, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says this is all "manufactured anger" because the protesters - he calls them the "Brooks Brothers Brigade" - are too tastefully appointed to be authentic protesters. Apparently only filthy hippies can petition government.

This, of course, doesn't preclude the possibility that the protesters are also Nazis; they were snappy dressers (Hugo Boss made SS uniforms, after all). But we'll leave that there.

The White House is asking supporters to submit the names of anyone who forwards e-mail with "fishy" information. "Fishy information" herewith defined as anything that serves as a speed bump for the White House steamroller.

The DNC has put out an ad claiming that the "right-wing extremist base" is out to "destroy" Barack Obama, so it has unleashed "angry mobs . . . mob activity straight from the playbook of high-level Republican political operatives. They have no plan for moving our country forward, so they've called out the mob."

The DNC ad points to a memo written by an activist named Bob MacGuffie as proof that Republican political ops are pulling the strings. It turns out that MacGuffie, a decent-seeming fellow, is a rank amateur whose Right Principles PAC has collected a mere $5,017 and disbursed the staggering sum of $1,777, and has 23 members on Facebook and five followers on Twitter, according to The Weekly Standard's Mary Katharine Ham.

It's difficult for mere mortals like us to fully grasp the enormousness of the Democrats' hypocrisy. Put aside all that talk of dissent being the highest form of patriotism. Overlook that Democrats would have upended jerry cans of gasoline and immolated themselves in protest if the Bush administration had asked people to inform on their neighbors. You can even forget that the DNC's claims are untrue.

But how can we ignore the fact that the world's most famous community organizer is whining about community organizing?

But wait: It gets better. As of this writing, the entire BarackObama.com site was dedicated to "Organizing for America," with a special page dedicated to "Organizing for Health Care," where supporters are asked to flood town halls and "make certain your members of Congress know that you're counting on them to act."

They only thing they left out is the instruction to leave the Brooks Brothers jackets and swastikas at home.

The reason for the panic is simple. Obama and the Democrats feel entitled to have their way on health care. This sense of entitlement is understandable. They won the election and control everything.

The problem is that Americans don't like what they've heard about the plan, and Obama is incapable of selling, or unwilling to sell, it on the merits (perhaps because he knows the plan will lead to the single-payer system he has long sought but now denies wanting). That's why Obama spends most of his time either attacking critics or denouncing the status quo.

Simply put: This administration believes it knows best. It feels it is the only legitimate beneficiary of "people power." It thinks it has a monopoly on democratic organizing. And it is terrified that it will be hobbled if it loses this fight.

So, it just stands to reason that anyone who stands in the way must be a fraud, a puppet, a goon - or even a Nazi.

1a) Keeping Big Brother Out of End-of-Life Decisions
By Suzanne Fields

When my mother was in her late 80s, I took her to a lawyer's office one sunny day to sign her "living will." We read over the questions and her answers, and she signed on the dotted line. She was pleased with the decisions that she had made weeks before.

We went shopping afterward, and she bought an antique watch that caught my eye in a shop window. This was an appropriate gift, she joked, because she had named me to be in charge of her "lifetime." If the time should come that a doctor asks whether to prolong her life when all hope is gone, I need to produce her living will.

Such discussions and "signings" with older parents had become commonplace among my friends of a certain age. We were confronting generational tasks that our grandparents never dreamed of. These were not morbid tasks, merely the latest reality bequeathed by technology that can keep a body physically alive, while those parts we think of as constituting our humanity have flown away. Yet nothing puts terror in the hearts of old folks as much as a discussion of end-of-life issues.

Can it be possible that faceless bureaucrats get the power to decide how an aging person will be "counseled," regarding when and how to give up the breath of life? This was the question asked of the president by a woman named Mary at a town hall meeting for the American Association of Retired Persons.

"I have been told there is a clause in there that everyone of Medicare age will be visited and told to decide how they wish to die," Mary said. "This bothers me greatly and I'd like for you to promise me that this is not in this bill."

The president looked greatly bothered by the question, too. He told her that the question was about getting information, not determining when and how someone's life would end. His grandmother, who died only months ago, the first lady and the president, himself, had signed living wills. This, he said, gave his grandmother "some control ahead of time." Nobody would be required to take such counseling, but one such medical consultation within a five-year period would be paid by government insurance.

That sounds harmless enough. The consultation would be voluntary, not mandatory; you could specify a family member to take charge if you can't. The legislation would simply guarantee your ability to learn about such choices and Medicare would pay for it. So, why are so many people still upset by the end-of-life clause in the House health care legislation?

The health care debate this time is focused on numbers, but a subtle psychological fear is pervasive: If the government in its "goodness" decides it can pay for end-of-life counseling, it can later on determine the content of the counseling. If the government in its "goodness" is concerned with the enormous cost of health care, looking everywhere for places to cut those costs, the elderly become an attractive budget item. Nevertheless, the insurance companies, imperfect and fallible though they are, depend on us to pay the freight. That leaves us in control of our choices, limited though they may be.

Trying to allay Mary's fears, the president offered a flippant answer: "We just don't have enough government workers to send to talk to everybody to find out how they want to die." But what if it did? What kind of Big Brother government have we created that makes us feel so small? Collecting information about how the elderly want to die is not the problem; who manages that information is the crucial part.

The health care debate is valuable as part of the search for ways to cover the uninsured, but it gives a lot of us the creepy feeling that we're losing the argument with the politicians, who are more concerned with creating a salable "product" than with thinking through the complexities.

Health care hasn't been in the hands of the kindly family doctor, sitting by the side of a sick child in that famous Norman Rockwell cover for the Saturday Evening Post, for a long, long time. The specialist and the technician with their mighty machines have replaced the reassuring touch of a healing human hand. The health care schemes, for all the good intentions of the schemers, sound ever more like schemes for a big government casino. That's not the place we want to be when our numbers come up.

2) Is the stock market's rally coming to an end? Or is this week's churning action merely the pause that refreshes?
By Mark Hulbert

INDU 9,370, +113.81, +1.23%


The difference between a top trader and the rest of us lies in how these questions are approached. Most of us are merely reactive, getting excited in the wake of any rally and becoming discouraged whenever the market declines -- even when it declines by as little as it did on Thursday, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average /quotes/comstock/10w!i:dji/delayed (INDU 9,370, +113.81, +1.23%) dropped by just 25 points.

A top trader, in contrast, relies on a set of indicators with proven track records that he or she will have identified in advance. This enables the trader to objectively determine when to sell rather than be vulnerable to emotions in the heat of the moment.

It is with this contrast in mind that I turn once again to Ned Davis, the founder of the institutional research firm Ned Davis Research. I devoted a column a week ago to a discussion of the indicators on which Davis relies to determine whether we are in a secular or a cyclical bull market. ( Read my July 30 column.)

In recent days, Davis has turned his attention to what would signal that it was time to reduce equity exposure and go to cash. He mentioned four indicators, any one of which would likely cause him to start selling:

•Valuation. Davis would look to exit from stocks whenever the P/E ratio on the S&P 500's normalized earnings reaches 20. To be sure, putting this indicator into practice is a bit tricky, since it requires normalizing those earnings -- adjusting them, in other words, for where we are in the economic cycle. Nevertheless, Davis calculates that normalized earnings on the S&P 500 index /quotes/comstock/21z!i1:in\x (SPX 1,010, +13.40, +1.34%) currently stand at "around $60," which suggests that Davis will be looking to start exiting the market at the 1,200 level.

•Sentiment. Davis maintains his own sentiment index, which he calls his "Crowd Sentiment Poll." This index currently stands at 62%, according to Davis, which is just above the 61.5% level that he considers to be the lower bound of "extreme optimism." He says that, on past occasions when this index has risen above 61.5%, its eventual peak has averaged 68%. He says that reaching that level this time around would "be a sign for traders to begin selling weak performers."

•Internal market divergences. The indicator that Davis relies on here is one that was created three decades ago by Norman Fosback, who currently edits a newsletter called Fosback's Fund Forecaster. The indicator is called the "High Low Logic Index," which represents the lesser of new 52-week highs or new 52-week lows as a percentage of all issues traded. In Fosback's book "Stock Market Logic," he describes this indicator's rationale as follows: "Under normal conditions, either a substantial number of stocks establish new annual highs or a large number set new lows -- but not both. As the [High Low] Logic Index is the lesser of the two percentages, high readings are therefore difficult to achieve. ... When the Index attains a high level, it indicates that the market is undergoing a period of extreme divergence. ... Such divergence is not usually conducive to future rising stock prices." Fortunately for the current market, this index is solidly in bullish territory right now at 0.8%, according to Davis' calculations. He says that it would have to rise to around 2.5% before he would start looking for the exit signs.

•Rising interest rates. Davis has found from his research that one of the best market timing indicators in recent years has been the 26-week rate of change for investment-grade bond yields. With that rate of change currently standing at minus 12.6%, a sell signal from this indicator is not imminent.

The bottom line? Only one of these four indicators is even close to flashing a warning signal right now, which is why Davis is bullish right now.

But, based on my tracking of his daily hotlines in recent years, I am confident that he won't hesitate to turn neutral or even bearish when these indicators turn.

Mark Hulbert is the founder of Hulbert Financial Digest in Annandale, Va. He has been tracking the advice of more than 160 financial newsletters since 1980.

2a) This Bull Needs a Breather: From the March bottom, stocks have rallied almost 50%. That's a nice move. It's a bull market unto itself, in about five months.
By Donald Luskin


Does it have further to go?

My trader's heart tells me it does, because watching stocks move tick by tick every day, it just doesn't feel to me like they really want to go down. Watching the tape go by, you can sense the momentum -- the exact reverse of what it felt like most of last year, when stocks just didn't want to go up.

But my brain is telling me that the upside is limited, at least for a while.

For one thing, history doesn't give us very many 50% moves in just five months. In fact, in anything that you'd want to call modern history it's happened only twice before, both times coming out of the worst of the Great Depression in the early 1930s.

Let's get some context here. At the bottom in June 1932, stocks had fallen 85% from their 1929 highs. They rallied about 50% within just a few months -- the same as stocks have rallied recently -- right off the lows. But even after the move up, stocks were still off 78% from the highs.

After that, stocks churned around for several months. Then in mid-1933, an even bigger rally kicked in. At its peak, stocks rallied another 90%. Whew! If that happened now, it would take stocks to all-time highs, way higher than their 2007 peaks. But in the Depression, stocks had fallen so much to begin with, that even after that huge move they were still 61% off their 1929 highs.

At the very worst of the bear market we just lived through, at the very bottom in early March, stocks had fallen 58% from the 2007 top. Do you see where I'm going with this? The two huge bull moves in the Depression -- the only ones in history as large as the one we've just experienced -- happened from levels so much lower that, even after those moves were completed, stocks were still down more than they were at the very worst moments last year.

In other words, stocks have huge rallies when they have been beaten down. They can have a second huge rally when they have been really beaten down. I don't see how we can have another move like the one we've just experienced, because as bad as it was in March, having stocks down 58% just isn't anything like having stocks down 85%.

OK, I suppose all I'm really saying that it makes no sense to expect another 50% rally on top of the 50% rally we've already had. Such a hope may seem so wildly optimistic that it isn't even worth my arguing against it. But as I go around the country talking to institutional clients, you'd be surprised how bullish they suddenly are.

Maybe no one is expecting another 50% in just five months. But they do have high expectations. My point is that the rally we've already had was incredibly marvelous and improbable -- the fact that we had it doesn't mean we're going to have a lot more upside, it means that the upside is limited because of how much upside we've already had.

The narrative behind the bullishness goes something like this. We were facing a global banking crisis of historical proportions that threatened to shut down the financial infrastructure of the whole world. At its worst, stocks were pricing for that possibility. Now that risk has been all but erased, so stocks have repriced -- higher -- because they don't have that to worry about. OK, I'll accept that. Absolutely true. But 50% in five months is already a lot of repricing.

But then the narrative goes even further. The story goes that stocks, always a forward-looking indicator of the economy, are forecasting an end to the recession. I agree with that, too. But then the most bullish investors say that because the recession is over, stocks should move higher.

There I cannot go. What they're really saying is that stocks should move higher when the same recovery that stocks themselves predicted comes true. But if stocks already predicted a strong economy by moving up, then why should they move up again when the economy is strong? They are saying, in essence, that a move up in stocks predicts a move up in stocks. That makes no sense.

And then there's the technical argument. I hear over and over that there are a lot of investors who regret missing the bottom in March. The saying always goes that "there's tons of cash on the sidelines." And a lot of people seem to think they have very specific information about this, saying things like "the hedge funds are all still short."

Maybe that's true, and maybe it isn't. But I know that when investors start saying you should buy stocks simply because other people are going to buy stocks, they've run out of rational arguments and have started to resort to pure wishful thinking.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not bearish here. I think stocks need a good correction, and I think they'll get one. And then I think they'll move somewhat higher. But I absolutely do not think that we have anything like an "all clear" signal, and that we can no expect stocks to surge back to the former highs and beyond, as though the credit crisis and the recession never happened.

They did happen. Financial channels are damaged, and will stay damaged for years. Government has taken on trillions in debt to deal with the crisis, which will be an overhang threatening the world economy -- with inflation and higher tax rates -- for years.

And lest I miss an opportunity to get on my political soap box, another major problem is that the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are going to keep trying to put more and more of the economy -- and your paycheck -- in the hands of government. That's not good for growth, and it's even worse for financial assets.

Let's not get greedy here, and try to run before we can even walk. The world just came through a near-death experience. It took intense and expensive treatment to save us. We survived, but we'll be living with the costs and the side effects of that treatment for a long while.

Be bullish. But don’t be foolish.

Donald Luskin is chief investment officer of Trend Macrolytics, an economics consulting firm serving institutional investors.

3)I look forward to your commentary and viewpoint since they are very much in
line with mine.

I agree with you and would like to add that I do not want the government involved in the life & death business that we are going towards. I can't believe why Americans, especially senior American, and especially, especially senior Jewish Americans, are marching down this Healthcare Reform Scam Trail like sheep. I had better watch
myself or they might think I am a "mobster" and un-American for disagreeing with the
anointed one...

4) Lebanese Army's shock: National Internet routed through… Haifa

A large Lebanese army force which raided the Lebanese Internet network center on Mt. Barukh east of the Lebanese town of Jezzine Saturday, Aug. 8 was dismayed to discover the exchange center which carries all of Lebanon's Internet links using equipment made in Israel. An intelligence sweep found the servers were routed to an exchange center in Haifa.

The soldiers impounded piles of equipment and rounded up several detainees at the mountain center and several Lebanese Internet companies.

Upon learning of the discovery, Hizballah demanded an immediate and thorough investigation of how all of Israeli intelligence acquired free access to all Lebanese internet communications like an open book.

In recent months, Lebanon has seen one suspected Israeli spy network after another exposed across the country. The spy rings were not busted by Lebanese intelligence but by agents of the Russian Federal Security Service - FSB working undercover in Lebanon since early this year at the invitation of the Lebanese Shiite Hizballlah.


Russian agents may also have led the Lebanese army to their discovery of the Israeli data center on Mt. Barukh.

5) The Chutzpah of the Town Hall Libel
By Sally Zelikovsky

Democrat bigwigs and their media shills have concocted a libelous narrative of the town hall phenomenon that has shaken up the party's health care plans. They meet the classic definition of Chutzpah, as explained by Leo Rosten in the Joy of Yiddish:


Gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible "guts"; presumption plus arrogance such as no other word, and no other language, can do justice to. A Chutzpanik may be defined as the man who shouts, "Help! Help!" while beating you up.


A fair sample of the Democrats' narrative is provided by Bill Press' article "The Tea Baggers Are Back -- Crazy as Ever." One can only conclude that this amounts to a collective act of audacity so flamboyant and disgraceful, that even liberals are taking notice. And this is driving the press and our leadership batty. Like the man above, Press cries "Help, help, they're protesting!" while he and those around him protest and have been for decades. His article is an expertly crafted verbal sleight of hand reminiscent of the fascist hooligans to which he likens today's tea party protesters. In his opening salvo he declares:


Ah, democracy! It never works better than when informed citizens gather in town hall meetings to discuss and debate the issues of the day.



But, oh, democracy! It's never more damaged than when partisan zealots plot to disrupt town hall meetings in order to prevent any honest debate of the issues.


That's Chutzpah, Bill, because if you did your journalistic homework, like, I don't know, actually spoke with some of us, you might have ascertained we are truly non-partisan -- you can ask the Hillary Pumas or the disgruntled Democrats and independents suffering from buyer's remorse about that. You would also learn that probably less than 1% of us are actually zealots given that most, if not all of us, protested for the first time in our lives on April 15th and have jobs and families that demand our full attention.


You would also conclude that we have been asking for an honest debate about the pending health care -- a debate that entertains all viewpoints and does not shut anyone out -- constituents as well as conservatives in Congress. We have been asking for town hall meetings and have been turned down long before the seeds for your article had been planted; we have been writing letters, sending faxes and emails and making calls to our elected officials and, if we receive a response, it is usually from an ignorant intern or a vapid form letter that regurgitates the congressperson's position and reveals that he/she will vote his/her conscience regardless of the constituents' opinions. This is why, Bill, we took to the streets in the first place.


And that's exactly what's happening in health care forums held across the nation by members of Congress....Taking a page right out of a Nazi playbook, organizers bus in professional protestors and arm them with instructions on how to take over meetings, shut down discussion, shout over any pro-health care reform speakers, and then post video of the resulting chaos on YouTube. It's mob rule, pure and simple.


It takes Chutzpah, Bill, to think that any of us would take our cues from a Nazi playbook. Many of us are Jewish, gay or Catholic -- groups persecuted by the Nazis. A considerable number of tea partiers have family who fought and died or were injured fighting the very bastards you align us with. And, let's be honest, Bill. The Nazis persecuted political dissenters, something we never did during the "Dissent is Patriotic" years of Bush. Given the memos on the White House website, memos from Health Care for America NOW! and the overall tone of the mainstream media about our supposed bad behavior (when the same media gave a free pass to every liberal protest during the Bush years), an atmosphere of repression is being created.


Your characterization of us as "professional protesters" is drenched in chutzpah. The left has paid community organizers whose express job it is to agitate. The left buses in people from the hinterlands, equips them with signs, shirts and buttons, gives them lunch and presto! Instant demonstration. I can personally attest that there is not one professional protester at the San Francisco Tea Party. I organize it. I know. Like it or not, Bill, we are all home grown. Some of us cut our teeth watching the left go nuts in front of Marine Recruitment offices in Oakland. But in the agitation world, we just fell off the turnip wagon.


Now, remember, you called us yahoos. So which is it? Are we slick, Astroturf professionals? Or tobacco-chewing, toothless yahoos? You can't have it both ways.


And listen up, Bill. If some of us took our cues from a handbook, it was the one our President studied, one we picked up and read when doing our homework about Mr. Obama: Alinsky's despicable Rules for Radicals. Right out of, what did you call it? The Nazi handbook? Bus them in, make them professional, arm them, take over meetings, shut down discussion, shout over them and use the media.


Tsk, tsk. The C-word again, Bill. "Mob rule pure and simple." If the few shout downs you wring your hands over amount to mob rule in your book, you better go back and read your history. Don't forget to include the Bush years when mobs, anger and derangement ruled the day. By the way, how is it that you and your fellow journalists know that the people who cause the unruly behavior are right wingers? As I said, many tea party folk hail from your end of the political spectrum and many left-wingers attend these meeting as well.


According to HCAN's instructional memo Fight Back against the Right, health care reform proponents are directed to attend town hall meetings with the primary purpose of...disrupting them, especially those arranged by...conservatives (seems a bit like the kettle calling the pot black, hm?). Left-wingers, who, unlike the right wingers in this memo, are not described as militant or extreme, are advised to meet with Members of Congress ahead of time to talk strategy (where's that wholesome debate?), bring more people to the meetings than the other side will have because they will have smaller numbers (so what are you so afraid of?), assign 3-5 people to speak with reporters and "be assertive in shaping the narrative that they write" (where's that down home objective journalism, you supposedly practice?) and are asked not to debate the policy at these meetings but to "re-focus the agenda on communicating with the Member of Congress" who "needs cover" because "they are getting beaten up by right wing zealots...." The memo states that its left-wing protestors should "let the Member know....that we, the majority, agree with him." Beautiful Stalinesque sleight of hand at the expense of freedom. And you, Bill, are a part of that. I'm sure you are proud of your Chutzpah.


Having encouraged viewers to show up, sympathetic anchors on Fox News then pretend these are "grassroots" protests springing up spontaneously across the country in opposition to President Obama's plans for health care reform. Nonsense. There's nothing spontaneous about them. They're not grassroots protests, they're "Astroturf" protests. Just look at who's paying the freight, who shows up and what orders they're given.


First of all, no one is paying the freight. I pay for the permits out of my own pocket. I set up and paid for my own website. I finance the T-shirts and stickers. Sometimes a couple of friends throw some money my way as a donation to buy something like wristbands to give away. Show me the money, Bill, and oh, there's more Chutzpah! Let's look at the funding for America's all-American Grassroots Organization of the Century: ACORN, that pinnacle of authentic, left-wing grassroots community organizing facing court challenges in several states for its voter fraud violations, heavily funded by a host of left-wing and liberal groups. Does their size, influence, funding and organization make them less grassrootsy? If it does, then I'll make you a deal. If you label them an "astroturf" organization, then when the tea party movement gets that big and powerful and well-funded, then you can call us astroturf too.


But as long as you refer to ACORN as a grassroots group, you might want to pull back on the Chutzpah and allow us the same classification and recall that most of us are doing this from our home computers, on our own time. Ask 99% of us why? Because we want the best this country has to offer in terms of liberty and prosperity for our children and their children. I know, so sappy it's hard to believe it's true. How can cold-feeling fiscal conservatives care about their offspring? Only liberals are that caring.


Funding and direction for the Stalinist-style campaign comes from two conservative, lobbyist-run Washington think tanks: Americans for Prosperity, headed by Tim Phillips, former partner of Ralph Reed in Century Strategies; and FreedomWorks, led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Previously, both organizations funded and orchestrated the so-called "tea parties" staged on April 15. And in many ways, today's town halls are simply a continuation of yesterday's tea parties, with many of the same players and tactics.


It's Chutzpah time again! What funding? Can you show it to me? And again, even if it were there, nu? (That's Yiddish for "So what?") What direction? Everyone I know, who is a tea party coordinator, does their own thing. I can't even get the various groups in the Bay Area to work together because they are so entrenched in their grassrootiness.


But this is when I really had it with your Chutzpah: your reference to our Stalinist-style campaign. Who is shutting up whom? Who has been forestalling townhall meetings? Who printed the Fight Back Against the Right memo (clearly addressed to folks on the left) instructing people how to arrange or dominate townhall meetings with their MOCs? In one breath, MOCs refuse to meet with constituents they assume are right wingers, HCAN puts out a memo telling left-wing agitators how they can go about arranging such meetings and that if they organize their own, they will have much more control over the event and will be able to limit the other side's opportunities for disruption. "When the other side gets too loud, we should shut them down with chants that counter their message." So, townhall meetings, disruption and shout downs are ok for left-wing agitators, but not right-wingers. And the left should wrest control from the right and re-focus towards the left, but when it is the other way around, oh, I get it, it is an angry, unruly mob!


Thank G-d your average American can diagnose a case of Chutzpah with ease. I'm sorry to report, Bill, that you are suffering from an acute case of Terminal Chutzpah.


How does this all sound for nonpartisanship, inclusiveness and open debate? Who is asking whom to snitch, Bill? And let's examine some of the dots here in this scenario. We have a memo from HCAN, the server for which is owned by Blue State Digital, which happens to be the former employer of Macon Phillips, who is Obama's media director and the suspected author of the now infamous "flag us" statement from the White House. Who is Stalinesque? Didn't Stalin have a politburo? Doesn't Obama have a record-breaking number of Czars who, I might add, are unaccountable to the People?


One more thing you should know, Bill. My husband and many of the tea party members came from Socialist or Communist dictatorships. In particular, my husband's family came from the USSR. When they were contemplating a move to the US in the early 70s, they couldn't even tell their extended family and friends for fear that information might be coerced from them in ways that make waterboarding look like child's play. They lived in fear that someone might get suspicious and snitch on them. The mere act of thinking about leaving the USSR put their jobs and apartment at risk. A mere slip of the tongue from their children in school could land them in the gulag. All this while you were worrying about whether you should wear black or brown shoes with your suit.


The tactics used by the left in the HCAN memo and in your own article, Bill, where you turn the debate on its head and shout "See?" have been around since bipeds crawled out of the primordial ooze.


I thank G-d I will be on the side of history with people who fought for the right of the common man to be heard rather than on the side that went through all manner of contortions to silence, marginalize and ultimately dehumanize the common man.


Yes, Americans don't like "rude, ugly obnoxious behavior on the left or right" but they also have a good nose and can sniff guys like you out like Limburger Cheese. And that is precisely what scares you.


In the end, the staged town hall protests will hurt the opposition's cause, not help it. Which is why, were I a Republican member of Congress, I'd encourage these yahoos to stay home. Were I a Democratic member, I'd pay them to show up.


In the end, Bill, were I a Republican member of Congress, I'd encourage the tea people to keep doing what they're doing because it is their God-given right enumerated in the Constitution and one that you exercise freely on a daily basis with access to millions. Were I a Democrat member, I'd stop grousing ad nauseum about your constituents exercising their First Amendments and earn your keep by actually answering their questions instead of obfuscating and prevaricating about the bill's contents.


Before I finish, I'd like to extend Bill an invitation to come to my home and explain to my children what a "tea bagger" is and how he can possibly include in that definition a person like their mother...an educated, heterosexual, Jewish, stay-at-home mom who is at the forefront of the tea party movement in the Bay Area. Once again, the press is debasing the tone of debate in America and giving parents across the nation cause to consider cancelling their subscriptions to a media that persists in using such odious and reprehensible verbiage to malign the millions who feel their representatives are not listening.


Sally Zelikovsky is the Founder of Bay Area Patriots and the Coordinator of the San Francisco Tea Party. She thanks President Obama for rushing through legislation inimical to liberty, forcing millions from all walks of life to wake out of their complacency and work together on issues that bind them, showing the world what true nonpartisanship is.