1) "The two most important rules in a gunfight are: always cheat and
always win."
2) Live Free or Die Fighting:
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. - Thomas Jefferson
3)
Jam it down our throats in 2009.
We will stick it up your a-- in 2010.
The above are fairly dramatic but they are also a realistic reaction or assessment to current events.
The Administration's treatment of the terrorist threat has been between pathetic and downright childish.
Every time I hear our Messiah, post an event, explain what he has learned and what he intends to do about it I feel less secure and dispirited. As I have written before, he sounds more like he is both talking to himself and trying to convince fifth graders.
Obama seems to be equally concerned about making sure our reaction is consistent with our values and getting the world to like us. Maybe Obama does not understand what our values are and where his own priorities should be.
We are at war. Terrorism is not a criminal matter comparable to a bank robbery.
The recidivism rate of our own prison system is horrendous and GW's release of Gitmo detainees to Saudi Arabia, for rehabilitation was a mistake and dumb. We eventually wound up meeting these 'rehabilitated' terrorists on the battlefield and had to finally kill them.
The fact that Obama chose to undo everything GW did regarding the 'war'against terrorism has been one mistake after another. GITMO is probably one of the best prisons in the world in terms of prisoner comfort and security. Closing it is a stupid reaction to past interrogation methods and releasing more prisoners to return to Yemen is beyond stupidity.
The second problem is that Obama has done everything he can to deny we are 'war' even refusing to use certain descriptive words etc.
He has traveled the world trying to appease our enemies in the mistaken belkief we could re-gain their favor. What naivety.
Third, our PC approach towards terrorism has encumbered our ability to face and deal with reality.
Until nations no longer are able to offer refuge or refuse it to terrorists we are disadvantaged and have no alternative to getting serious and tough. We should withhold aid and employ other acts of retribution for those nations who fail to co-operate. Hopefully this is why our top general went to Yemen this week.
Finally, piracy is simply another way terrorist activities are funded and the payment of ransom should be treated as money laundering.
In a previous memo, I mentioned three threats to our freedom that will continue to negatively impact on our standard of living and they were: terrorism, government intrusion in the economy and the poor state of public education.
Nothing has 'changed' to cause me to alter my view and , in fact, matters have gotten immeasurably worse.
I previously rejected the argument made by others that Obama will prove to be "A Manchurian Candidate." Whether purposeful or simply mistakenly, the effect of Obama's first year in office challenges my rejection of this extreme view.
Closing down our Yemen Embassy, putting dumb restrictions on passengers like not going to the bath room, reading books etc. are victories for Jihadists. These knee jerk responses to our cumbersome and bloated bureaucracy's inability to connect dots and respond to information, virtually delivered on a platter, by the latest perp's father should make us the laughing stock of the world and give both comfort and reassure our enemies.
If, in his second year, Obama does not begin to alter his approach, I might reluctantly succumb to this conspiratorial view.
Obama's budget busting fiscal policies, his press for radical legislation, his unrealistic view of the terrorist threat and his sophomoric belief the world will like us better if we renounce everything GW did is not effective leadership.
It is only a matter of time before those in the medical profession begin re-acting to Obamacare. The sword over our neck is beginning to fall. (See 1 and 1a below)
Several months ago I reviewed George Gilder's latest book: "The Israel Test." Now another review. (See 2 below.)
A 'biased' source presents his argument why the White House's claim regarding its Israel policy being mis-represented is questionable. (See 3 below.)
Israel appoints a new head of IDF Operations. (See 4 below.)
A Republican win in 2010 could boomerang according to Kyle Smith, because it would force Obama to become less radical, move him to the center and thus, enhance his chance or re-election. (See 5 below.)
Kathleen Parker re-sets the clock and now believes Obama's year of grace has ended - time to start dribbling! (See 6 below.)
Dick
1) Mayo Clinic in Arizona to Stop Treating Some Medicare Patients
The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.
More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.
Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.
“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”
Medicare Loss
The Mayo organization had 3,700 staff physicians and scientists and treated 526,000 patients in 2008. It lost $840 million last year on Medicare, the government’s health program for the disabled and those 65 and older, Mayo spokeswoman Lynn Closway said.
Mayo’s hospital and four clinics in Arizona, including the Glendale facility, lost $120 million on Medicare patients last year, Yardley said. The program’s payments cover about 50 percent of the cost of treating elderly primary-care patients at the Glendale clinic, he said.
“We firmly believe that Medicare needs to be reformed,” Yardley said in a Dec. 23 e-mail. “It has been true for many years that Medicare payments no longer reflect the increasing cost of providing services for patients.”
Mayo will assess the financial effect of the decision in Glendale to drop Medicare patients “to see if it could have implications beyond Arizona,” he said.
Nationwide, doctors made about 20 percent less for treating Medicare patients than they did caring for privately insured patients in 2007, a payment gap that has remained stable during the last decade, according to a March report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a panel that advises Congress on Medicare issues. Congress last week postponed for two months a 21.5 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements for doctors.
National Participation
Medicare covered an estimated 45 million Americans at the end of 2008, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency in charge of the programs. While 92 percent of U.S. family doctors participate in Medicare, only 73 percent of those are accepting new patients under the program, said Heim of the national physicians’ group, citing surveys by the Leawood, Kansas-based organization.
Greater access to primary care is a goal of the broad overhaul supported by Obama that would provide health insurance to about 31 million more Americans. More family doctors are needed to help reduce medical costs by encouraging prevention and early treatment, Obama said in a June 15 speech to the American Medical Association meeting in Chicago.
Reid Cherlin, a White House spokesman for health care, declined comment on Mayo’s decision to drop Medicare primary care patients at its Glendale clinic.
Medicare Costs
Mayo’s Medicare losses in Arizona may be worse than typical for doctors across the U.S., Heim said. Physician costs vary depending on business expenses such as office rent and payroll. “It is very common that we hear that Medicare is below costs or barely covering costs,” Heim said.
Mayo will continue to accept Medicare as payment for laboratory services and specialist care such as cardiology and neurology, Yardley said.
Robert Berenson, a fellow at the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said physicians’ claims of inadequate reimbursement are overstated. Rather, the program faces a lack of medical providers because not enough new doctors are becoming family doctors, internists and pediatricians who oversee patients’ primary care.
“Some primary care doctors don’t have to see Medicare patients because there is an unlimited demand for their services,” Berenson said. When patients with private insurance can be treated at 50 percent to 100 percent higher fees, “then Medicare does indeed look like a poor payer,” he said.
Annual Costs
A Medicare patient who chooses to stay at Mayo’s Glendale clinic will pay about $1,500 a year for an annual physical and three other doctor visits, according to an October letter from the facility. Each patient also will be assessed a $250 annual administrative fee, according to the letter. Medicare patients at the Glendale clinic won’t be allowed to switch to a primary care doctor at another Mayo facility.
A few hundred of the clinic’s Medicare patients have decided to pay cash to continue seeing their primary care doctors, Yardley said. Mayo is helping other patients find new physicians who will accept Medicare.
“We’ve had many patients call us and express their unhappiness,” he said. “It’s not been a pleasant experience.”
Mayo’s decision may herald similar moves by other Phoenix- area doctors who cite inadequate Medicare fees as a reason to curtail treatment of the elderly, said John Rivers, chief executive of the Phoenix-based Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association.
“We’ve got doctors who are saying we are not going to deal with Medicare patients in the hospital” because they consider the fees too low, Rivers said. “Or they are saying we are not going to take new ones in our practice.”
1a)History Is Knocking for Obama
By James Lewis
Gimme a "health care" bill...any health care bill! Even if it kills the old and the sick by compulsory rationing. See, if somebody has only a statistical ten years to live, then his or her life is worth only one-seventh of an infant who has seventy years to go. There's only so much pork sausage in the national pie.
So we have to put the kids before the old, just like the Eskimos used to do during the Arctic winters. Let the old walk out of the igloo into the frozen night to keep the babies alive. That's why Sarah Palin is exactly right in talking about "death panels." Depriving the old and sick of medical care is what death panels do. They do it all the time in Euro-socialism. It's one of the amazing miracles of that system -- just read the British papers on the web. It's coming to your neighborhood soon. This is not "health care"; it's SickoCare, because it's been planned and passed by some real sickos.
Gimme a stimulus package...ummm, say, just a tetch less than a trillion bucks...for buying friends just in time for my reelection in 2012. Eight hundred and seventy-five billion sounds like a lot less than one trillion. We'll sell it to the suckers as a Green Jobs package.
Copenhagen? Climate Fraud? Listen, my buds at the Chicago Carbon Exchange need the dough, and so do I. I'm going to rescue Copenhagen. Get Hillary over there with a hundred million bucks for starters.
Greek columns for my Denver speech? Why not? They make me look like a Greek god. Listen to all those cheers from the suckers! There really is one born every minute. A speech from the Prussian Victory Monument in Berlin, built out of Napoleon's French artillery pieces? Love it!
How about a Peace and Love Speech to all the world's Muslims from al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo? Peace, brothers! Peace! Do I look good or what?
I'm so cool, Dude! Doesn't everybody get it? OK, lay down your arms, yo.
Yo?
Tell you what: I'm gonna lay down my arms first, and then smile, everybody...
A Nobel Peace Prize? Gimme that sucker! Sorry, King and Queen, can't stop, I'm in a hurry. Gotta save that planet from the riiiiising of the seas!
Ten percent unemployment? Well, it's structural, see. We're going to have ten percent as far as the eye can see. It's not my fault. That's just reality, baby. We'll give you some more handouts. Extend that unemployment money.
(Do you see a pattern here yet?)
But now we come to War and Peace. The Left is really erudite on War and Peace. Their basic delusional belief is that "we do Peace, they do war." (We're talking about Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin, Castro's nuclear missiles in 1962...the whole gang of crooks and thugs, going back all the way to Karl Marx. Marx didn't mind war; he just wanted to make the really bloody war happen between the workers and the bosses. That's what "revolution" means. Lenin convinced the Left that there was never any Soviet imperialism. It couldn't be imperialism, because only capitalists are imperialists. Honest. They still believe that, after a hundred million dead from Communist regimes. Yes! Ask 'em.)
Afghanistan does look different when you see it from the White House, doesn't it? So does Iraq. For one thing, you actually have to look at a map of the world, and you don't want to get blamed for the results of a U.S. defeat --- what'll happen to Pakistani nukes if the Taliban take over Afghanistan, for example, or what's going to happen with Iranian nukes by 2011? Because see, there's no border between those two 'stans. None. It's all Pashtun tribes...no border at all. Af-Pak is just one territory when it comes to war and peace.
The Democrats don't know nothin' 'bout history, they don't know nothin' 'bout jee-ography, and their total ignorance is their source of total confidence. John Kerry thinks he can talk the mullahs into giving up nukes even today...just like Jimmy Carter, who knows who's really to blame for the mullahs. (It's not Jimmah, but it starts with a "J.")
It's obvious by now that the Democrats also don't know 'bout 'rithmetic -- see the budget, for example. The budget in D.C. is so top-heavy that it's keeling over -- but it does that wherever the Left rules, like California and New York. That sick-making "health care" fiasco was never supposed to add up. Arithmetic is for suckers. Tell the CBO to make those numbers add up twice! So they actually did. The Congressional Budget Office confessed to double-counting, but only after the bill passed the Senate.
Are you beginning to see a certain lack of...moral seriousness here? Well, nothing is a sharper moral dilemma than peace and war. We're talking about real peace and real war, not the kind the Lefties sing those campfire songs about. These are the real ones you have to get right, and it doesn't matter if the New York Times likes it or not. The NYT will never have to make a moral choice that even approaches a single street cop facing a single armed bank robber. That's why they can preach from 42nd Street and blame everybody. That's our Obama, straight from the editorial pages of the NYT. It's his natural home.
So after six months of Hamlet the Prince of Denmark dithering and dithering at the White House, guess what? Obama is now doing exactly what Bush was doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Everything you've heard to the contrary is spin and whitewash. We have 100,000 soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. We have 140,000 fighting in Iraq. Al-Qaeda is still blowing up hundreds of civilians in Baghdad. Yes, they talk about getting out, but that's just their way: The whole election was one lie after another, and the media swallowed every single one and loved it. So now the Os think they can do the same thing in office. They will postpone a military withdrawal over and over, and after next year it'll be the same thing -- because the strategic logic of those places is locked in hard granite, and it's not going to change. Leave Afghanistan, and you might see Paki nukes in the hands of al-Qaeda. Leave Iraq, and you will certainly see nukes in the hands of the Twelver Cult of Iran, right next door to the biggest oil fields in the world, and also next door to Mecca, which the mullahs have always cast their covetous eyes on.
Liberals hate oil unless it's in their own cars. Liberals love windmills unless they're off Cape Cod. No War for Oil! It's always the same. Oil is the lifeblood of civilization, and when you really start bleeding bad, you keel over very quickly. Then you're gone. Oil is the same. No oil, no economy, no hospitals, no electricity, no transportation, no food, no military, no industry, no civilized world.
In foreign policy, Obama = Bush. The only difference is that the hopelessly corrupt media haven't made headlines about Obama's Wars. But then they are the last to 'fess up to anything -- like their own malfeasance over the last thirty years. Still, even Cindy Sheehan isn't deceived anymore. But Mother Sheehan, who walked straight out of Stalin's agitprop posters of the '30s to whip up the media against Bush -- well, Ma Sheehan isn't getting any headlines any more. Bye, Mom.
And yet that puffing steam locomotive of history is heading our way. You can hear it whistling in the distance and getting closer. At some point you can no longer be president and run from it. Jimmy Carter tried and failed. LBJ tried and failed.
Bill Clinton gave us 9/11 by sabotaging any serious fight against terrorism -- and he managed to evade responsibility with a solid media Phalanx of Lies. But 9/11 was Bill Clinton's failure. It was Clinton's Justice Department that invented that impenetrable wall between foreign and domestic intelligence, so that a phone call from Al-Qaeda in Yemen was protected by U.S. law as soon as somebody picked it up in New York City. Yes, really.
Well, today, Islamic Fascist Terrorism is knocking on Obama's door. So far, it's knocked twice.
Knock. Knock.
KNOCK: Fort Hood Muslim military psychiatrist kills twelve soldiers and shoots another thirty-plus. This guy has been sending Muslim holiday e-mails to Islamofascist radicals for years, he's been talking jihad against the Great Satan right in front of other soldiers, he's got a business card that says "Soldier of Allah" -- and on and on. He just shot unarmed people over and over, shouting "Allahu Akhbar" like they always do. He was a well-known danger, and therefore the result of a gigantic command failure at Fort Hood. But the chain of command goes all the way up to Army General Casey, who is in charge of PC-whipping the military for Obama. It's been twisted by now to bow down to Mecca. It all comes from the Commander in Chief, who has reinstalled the PC reign of terror in the armed forces.
Obama's reaction to the Fort Hood massacre:
"We don't know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts."
But we did know the facts. Everybody knew it except the White House.
KNOCK: Christmas Day Bomber on Northwest Flight 253 almost sets off a bomb right above the fuel tank. He's a known danger: His dad, the former Minister of Finance of Nigeria, said so. He was head of the Muslim Student Union at University College London, a well-known center for radical recruitment. He attended the infamous Bomber Mosque in East London, where all the radicals hang out and preach to each other. He's a 23-year old engineering student who knows how to build simple bombs. He just came back from Yemen, where al-Qaeda has been setting up for years. This guy was covered with red flags, but nobody noticed? Twenty-four hours later, we know all about him -- so it seems that we've been blinded again as a matter of policy. The Wall is back.
Obama's reaction to Xmas Day near-massacre:
1. Say nothing for three days, and send Janet Napolitano and Robert Gibss out to tell the press with a straight face that "[t]he system worked." Two administration people saying the identical thing -- amazing. Then when everybody laughs at them both, Janet 'fesses up. You can see the strings running from her mouth to the White House. She's fronting for the Big Guy and trying to see if the biggest lie will be accepted first. Then she backs down.
Finally:
2. After four days of silence, body-surfing, and snorkeling at Oahu, Obama has a statement for the world:
"President finally admitted yesterday that 'a systemic failure has occurred. And I consider that totally unacceptable.''' But notice that it was obvious to the world for four whole days, and they first tried to peddle a flagrant lie.
Still, Obama is doing the Bill Clinton shuffle.
Heritage writes that he told "the American people that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was "an isolated extremist" and that he had already "been charged with attempting to destroy an aircraft." Continuing to treat the incident like a common law enforcement problem, Obama referred to Abdulmutallab as the "suspect" five times and promised he would "not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable."
He's getting away with it, but people are holding their breath. Tony Harnden, the UK Daily Telegraph's U.S. editor, writes: "Barack Obama gets an 'F' for protecting Americans."
Next KNOCK? Wait for it... it's coming.
Our Hero is either in Deep Denial or Deep Doo-Doo. He can't decide which it is.
But the world will decide for him very soon.
Everybody knows it's coming. It came to London, it came to New York City, and it came to Madrid. It came to Fort Hood and Detroit. Who's next? Washington, D.C.? Flight 93 almost hit the White House, or maybe it was going to crash into the Capitol. Everybody died in that plane, so we will never know where it was supposed to crash. The Brooklyn Bridge has already been tried, but these characters are nothing if not persistent. Remember, 9/11 was the second time they tried to blow up the Twin Towers, almost ten years apart. They really believe in martyrdom. (Question to Ahmadinejad: What is the greatest thing a Muslim must do? A'jad: To kill and die for Allah.)
But we will read them their Miranda rights if we catch 'em.
Hoo boy, we've been lucky so far. If we're lucky, we don't have to be good, right? We don't even have to be competent. We'll just keep whistlin' past the graveyard. Obama's trying to get away with deep denial, but the longer he tries, the more likely he is to land the country in deep...yes.
That's what moral seriousness means, folks. Bush had it. Cheney had it. Even JFK had it. Obama doesn't. They don't do moral seriousness in Chicago politics.
Al-Qaeda is sensing Obama's moral weakness. Ahmadinejad is absolutely sure about it by now -- if you doubt that, you can watch A'jad's interviews with U.S. news media. He's probing, probing, all the time -- where's their weak spot? That's why he was such a great interrogator for the Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the start of a stellar career for A'jad. A lot of the time, you didn't even need torture. You could just execute them by their own words. Probing, probing. Why do you think A'jad appointed a known torturer to be the Minister of Justice in Tehran? Yes, that's why.
Hell, even the President of France is sending out public warnings about America's moral weakness. Moral weakness means an inability to make the hard choices and then follow them up even when things get tough. George W. Bush was the most morally serious president we've had in the last twenty years. Bush is like Harry S Truman: He recognized 9/11 and prioritized it. Everything else came second, and he kept the country safe. Bush and Cheney got it.
Obama and Bill Clinton are the two most grossly irresponsible presidents we've ever had -- bar none. But between those two, Obama looks even worse. Even Bill Clinton didn't go around like Daffy Duck picking up all the ego goodies here, there, and everywhere.
The only thing that will save us is the strength and resilience of the American people, the fundamental soundness of the U.S. Constitution, and the strength of our armed forces in defensive warfare -- since preemptive attacks have now been ruled out. They are not politically correct. The Israelis will have to do that job for us.
We have let our citizens become fools by failing to teach them our own history, and they naturally elected somebody just like them to the highest office in the land. He looks good on TV if he's got that teleprompter turned on. Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and Obama goes body-surfing in Waikiki. Aloha, Dude!
The good news is that Mad magazine is publishing again.
The bad news is that in the White House, "what, me worry?" explains national security policy.
2)George Gilder's Israel Test: Who Passes? Who Fails?
By Ron Lipsman
In his remarkably philo-Semitic book The Israel Test, George Gilder poses a short series of moral questions to both individuals and nations, the answers to which determine on which side the respondent falls in the ongoing struggle for the political, economic, and cultural soul of the world's people. Mr. Gilder's dramatic thesis is stated forcefully and clearly in the opening paragraphs of his book, which I quote in part:
The central issue in international politics ... is the tiny state of Israel. The prime issue is not a global war of civilizations between the West and Islam ...The real issue is between the rule of law and the rule of leveler egalitarianism, between creative excellence and covetous "fairness," between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment of it.
Israel defines a line of demarcation. On one side...are those who see capitalism as a zero-sum game in which success comes at the expense of the poor...On the other side are those who see the genius and good fortune of some as a source of wealth and opportunity for all.
The test can be summarized by a few questions: What is your attitude toward people who excel you in the creation of wealth or in other accomplishment? Do you aspire to their excellence, or do you seethe at it? Do you admire and celebrate exceptional achievement, or do you impugn it and seek to tear it down? Caroline Glick ... sums it up: "Some people admire success; some people envy it. The enviers hate Israel."
Today tiny Israel ... stands behind only the United States in technological contributions. In per-capita innovation, Israel dwarfs all nations.
As if the anti-Semites of the world needed another reason to hate the Jews. Gilder has not only highlighted two of the most historic causes of Jew-hatred, but he has wrapped them in a brilliantly colored package, which on the one hand explains much of the vilification of Israel that occurs today, and on the other, will surely attract more hatred in their direction. To explain, let me quickly recall a (probably incomplete) list of seven main reasons for anti-Semitism. The first four of the following are couched in terms an anti-Semite might use.
1. The arrogance of the "chosen people." That this tiny, in some ways wretched band of people would declare themselves chosen by God, entrusted with His mission of redeeming humanity, and then flaunt their arrogance by holding themselves above all mankind in their perverted pursuit of that goal is insulting, contemptible, and incendiary. Small wonder that their haughtiness has earned them the enmity of most of humanity.
2. Ethical monotheism. As inventors of a demanding morality (embodied in the Ten Commandments), and by their continued promulgation of their God's moral law, they render uncomfortable many who would prefer not to be bound by the standards of the Jewish God's dictates.
3. Refusal to accept Christ. They spurned the true Messiah when he appeared on Earth and their continued existence is an affront to the Christian religion, which superseded the original mandate the Jews received from God.
4. Infidels. They rejected Mohammed and they epitomize the infidels of the world who stand in the way of a worldwide caliphate and the global reign of Islam.
5. Generally obnoxious. I am not engaging in self-hatred here, yet I think that it is not incorrect to assert that no other ethnic group has a leg up on the Jews in the category of "behaving obnoxiously."
6. Money-grubbers. With their seemingly natural affinity for commerce, the Jews of the world, in their roles as bankers, investors, entrepreneurs, accountants, and businessmen, have proven repeatedly that their ability to accumulate wealth -- sometimes deemed at the expense of others -- far exceeds that of their neighbors, thereby engendering the envy and resentment of Gentiles.
7. Unnatural success. Envy and resentment of the Jews is not restricted to their role in commerce. In the arts, sciences, technology, politics, law, and even war (at times), the achievements of this tiny tribe is so far above the median that it causes wonder and amazement. The ensuing reaction of many is more than envy and resentment. It encompasses a belief that the Jews must be lying, cheating, and stealing from the Gentiles -- behavior that merits punishment and retribution.
It is the last two reasons that Gilder has highlighted and conjoined. How? Well, in the last two decades, Israel has performed a sharp about-face in regard to its fundamental economic philosophy. Its founders a century ago were hardcore socialists, and the Labor Party that unilaterally ruled the nation (from pre-State days until thirty years ago) represented that mentality. From Labor's fall in 1977, it took more than fifteen years for the nation to overcome its economic blindness. But beginning in the last decade of the 20th century, Israel finally unleashed the entrepreneurial power of its highly educated and creative citizenry. The Zionists became capitalists.
The long delay in the arrival of that transformation is ironic. As Gilder points out,
The great irony of Israel is that for much of its short history it has failed the Israel test. It has been a reactionary force, upholding the same philosophy of victimization and Socialist redistribution that has been a leading enemy and obstacle for Jewish accomplishment throughout the ages. As a Jewish country, Israel should have arisen rapidly after the war as a center of Jewish achievement. Instead, its leftist assumptions actually inclined it toward the Soviet model...Until the 1990s, Jews could succeed far more readily in the United States than in Israel. The Israel test gauges the freedom and equality of opportunity in a country by the success of Jews there. By this Israel test, the United States was far freer and more favorable to creativity and excellence, and thus to Jewish achievement, than the state of Israel itself.
But the Jews of Israel have more than made up for the lost time, as the closing paragraph of the opening quote from Gilder makes clear. (The actual statistics are on page 109 in his book.) To reiterate, in terms of technological innovation, Israel ranks ahead of all the nations of Western Europe, ahead of all the Asian tigers, and behind only the U.S. And that is only in absolute terms; per capita, Israel's entrepreneurial productivity dwarfs that of any other country. "Wonder and amazement!"
Thus, it is clear how Gilder has folded together items 6 and 7. The Jews are not only "guilty" of an abnormal ability to handle money and of achievements way beyond the norm -- but the two come together in an explosion of capitalistic entrepreneurship in the small desert nation. Swell! The Jewish nation is now a model of free-market capitalism. One of the prime reasons that too many of the world's people lustily despise the United States is its grand success as the greatest capitalistic nation in the history of the world. Israel now joins the U.S. as a second exemplar of democratic capitalism. As I said, the world did not have enough reasons to hate Israel. Now it has a "new one." But note: The first four reasons for anti-Semitism that I cited are special to the Jewish people. (Some would say, "So is the fifth.") On the other hand, the amalgam of 6 and 7 that Gilder has identified is now intimately tied to the United States.
According to Gilder, all those who hate Israel -- and the U.S., for that matter -- because of their economic success are flunking the Israel test. Incapable of celebrating the exceptional achievements of a small nation, they seethe at Israel's accomplishments. Rather than imitate Israel's methods, they impugn Israel's motives and seek to blame the poverty of Israel's Arab neighbors on the Jewish nation's economic prowess. They hurl the epithet "Nazi" at Israel, even if they are aware of the obscenity that such an accusation represents.
But make no mistake: The hatred of Israel extends to an equally virulent hatred of America. In the words of Iran's mullahs, the USA is the "Great Satan" and Israel is the "Little Satan." Both must be eradicated. Well, the mullahs are certainly among the Israel-haters referred to above. Who are the others? Let us examine who has passed the Israel test and who has failed it. First, I'll discuss those who receive a passing grade -- a pathetically short list, actually. It includes the United States, a few other nations in the Western Hemisphere, a small group of European countries, and a very limited number of Asian and South Pacific states. I have purposefully not identified the specific countries that pass the Israel test (beside the U.S.) because it is a highly subjective exercise, and I venture that the list's contents would depend heavily on who is compiling it. For example, Canada is on the list, but is Mexico? Poland makes the cut; sadly, Britain probably does not; and what about Germany? Regardless of who compiles the list, it is guaranteed to be short.
Fifty years ago, the list was much longer. However, the Israel test was also much easier to pass back then. Israel was a socialist country, the world was restrained by the shame of the recent Holocaust, and the tiny Jewish nation was still cast as the underdog in its battle to survive in the Middle East. But the Six-Day War in 1967 removed the underdog status, the check that the memory of the Holocaust exerts has weakened substantially, and Israel has cashed in socialism for capitalism. The list of those who pass the test has shrunk dramatically. Former friends like France vanished from it long ago. Other Western European and South American nations have followed suit in recent years.
Now who has failed the test? Above all, the Muslim world has. With the exception of Turkey -- and it seems to be reassessing its stand lately -- the unremitting hostility toward Israel from the Muslim world is nearly universal, not to mention fierce and grotesque. The next group of failures includes all the left-leaning socialist and semi-socialist countries of the world. Outside the Soviet bloc, that group was relatively small and declining during and after the Reagan era. But in recent times, it has noticeably expanded, and all those who have fallen into the leftist mode are now earning failing grades on the Israel test. Then there are the third- and fourth-world basket-cases throughout Africa and Asia. The fact that they extort foreign aid from the U.S. and Israel does not prevent them from falling in line behind the previous two groups in their condemnations of Israel. That doesn't leave many countries on the map. In summary, aside from the U.S. and a few other friendly countries, the vast majority of the world's nations earn failing grades on the Israel test.
Here is a really sad postscript to the previous observations. Even within the countries that pass the test, there are substantial segments of the population that fail individually (or in groups). This is true of even the United States. For heaven's sake, the President of the United States gets a resounding failing mark on the test. And finally, painful as it is to admit, one must acknowledge that a not insignificant part of the Israeli public -- largely left over from the halcyon days of Labor rule -- flunks the test as well.
If Western Europe continues to decay, and if the U.S. succumbs to the socialists who are currently running our country, then it is legitimate to ask what comes next. Who will be the world's top dog? China? Russia? India? An Islamic caliphate? The answer to that question is only partly clear. Russia and the Muslim world flunk the Israel test, hands down. If Gilder is right, neither will be top dog of anything. What about China or India? In some sense, both are still sitting for the test. Their fates -- and ours -- await the outcome.
3)Does the Media Misrepresent Obama When It Comes to Israel?
By Leonard Getz
Ever since the Jewish community caught on to President Obama's pressure on Israel to impose a "settlement freeze" in Judea, Samaria ,and parts of Jerusalem, the administration has blamed the media for misrepresenting its overall policy and strategic approach to the "peace process." One article said that "[t]here was concern about an imbalance in pressures placed on Israel as opposed to on the Palestinians and the Arab States ... the President indicated he had a sensitivity to the perception of that imbalance and had to work harder to correct that perception ..."
Obama had an opportunity to do just that on November 10, when Undersecretary of State William J. Burns addressed the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. But the speech proved that the media got it right the first time. Burns said, "We do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements; we consider the Israeli offer to restrain settlement activity to be a potentially important step, but it obviously falls short of the continuing Roadmap obligation for a full settlement freeze."
One would think that having cited the Roadmap and wanting to place equal pressure on both sides, Burns would take the opportunity to remind the Palestinian Authority of its requirements under the Roadmap, such as confiscation of illegal weapons, dismantlement of terrorist organizations, arrest of terrorists, cessation of incitement to violence, recognition of the state of Israel and the display of the map of Israel in schools, and an end to glorifying Islamic terrorists by naming streets and sport facilities after them.
But no, not word about any of this from Burns.
Burns did call for a relaunch of direct negotiations and said that "that emphatically does not mean starting from scratch; it means building on previous agreements." This would mean that the Palestinian Authority specifically should revoke the clauses in their charter calling for the destruction of Israel -- something they have yet to do in spite of their promises. In fact, they reaffirmed these clauses at a recent convention.
But no, Burns made no such demands on the Palestinian Authority.
Instead, he whitewashed it all with a dreamy and dangerous call for "international support for the Palestinian Authority's impressive plan to build over the next couple years the institutions that a responsible Palestinian state requires." What exactly this plan requires, Burns does not say. But we all know it calls for nothing less than the uprooting of thousands of Jews from their homes. He also envisions "a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, that ends the daily humiliations of Palestinians under occupation, and that realizes the full and remarkable potential of the Palestinian people."
What does contiguous territory mean? It means linking the Palestinian Authority with Hamas-controlled Gaza and rendering Israel non-contiguous. And what make-over does Burns require from the Palestinian Authority to reach this lofty goal?
Not a thing.
It is Israel that must make itself non-contiguous so that the Palestinian Arabs can be allowed to "realize [their] remarkable potential." I shudder to think what that might translate into when the hypothetical Palestinian state becomes contiguous with a Hamas-controlled Gaza.
Burns is irritatingly ironic in not recognizing that calling for a settlement freeze plays right into the hands of what he describes as "the fundamentally negative agenda of violent extremists, who are much better at describing what they want to destroy rather than what they want to build." If Obama were truly interested in "change," he would encourage the Palestinian Arabs to accept and live in peace with their Jewish neighbors. He would stop pushing Israel and start pushing the Palestinian Authority to take concrete steps towards ending its war against Israel and the Jewish people.
Burns is fond of quoting Winston Churchill. He admitted that the great English statesman had a point when he said, "the thing he liked most about Americans was that 'they always did the right thing in the end ... they just liked to exhaust all the alternatives first.'" Churchill also said, "Those who appease the crocodile get eaten last." Let's hope Obama can keep that crocodile at bay by doing the right thing now.
Leonard Getz is a national vice president of the Zionist Organization of America.
4)Newly Appointed Head of the IDF Operations Division
Today, January 3rd, 2009, Brig. Gen. Kobi Barak was appointed the Head of
the IDF Operations Division during a ceremony held at the Rabin Base at the
IDF Headquarters in Tel Aviv. Maj. Gen. Tal Russo, Chief of the Operations
Branch was present at the ceremony along with other senior officers.
Brig. Gen. Barak will be replacing Brig. Gen Aviv Kochavi who had held the
position for two years and three months.
During the ceremony, the Chief of the Operations Branch, Maj. Gen. Tal Russo
said: "During Aviv's term, the Operations Branch continued to strengthen the
IDF's operational dominance, its use of force and the building up of its
strength. Different operational plans have advanced, procedures have been
established, the environment within the division has progressed and the
IDF's preparedness in dealing with the challenges of war has substantially
increased."
The newly appointed Head of the Operations Division, Brig. Gen. Barak said:
"2010 holds great challenges for the IDF and the State of Israel. The
Operations Branch will continue to fearlessly lead the operational staff of
the IDF and if need be, will fulfill its role in times of emergency in an
honorable and professional way."
Outgoing Head of the Operations Division, Brig. Gen. Kochavi said: "This
land has known numerous wars and operations, and in all of them the
performance of the high command and the General Staff was naturally
emphasized. In order to learn from past lessons and in order to function as
a relevant and efficient body, we have set up a central goal: We will not
only piece together an operational overview and it will not suffice us to
serve only as the General Staff's control board, but we will be an
initiating and proactive body, one that realizes changes and opportunities,
and creates a status assessment apparatus which will strengthen the quality
of decision making and the IDF's effectiveness and will strengthen the
efficiency of how they are carried out."
Brig. Gen. Kobi Barak – Curriculum Vitae
In 1982, Brig. Gen. Kobi Barak was recruited to the Israel Defense Forces
and joined the Armored Corps.
2002-2004: Commander of the IDF Ikvot HaBarzel Armored Brigade.
2004-2006: Head of the IDF Operations Department in the Operations Branch.
2006-2007: Central Command Executive Officer
2007-2009: Commander of the Amud HaEsh Division.
Brig. Gen. Barak completed his BA in Mechanical Engineering from Ben Gurion
University in Beer Sheva and received his Masters Degree in Political
Science from Haifa University.
He is married to Orit Barak and is father to three children.
Brig. Gen. Aviv Kochavi – Curriculum Vitae
Brig. Gen. Aviv Kochavi was born in 1964.
In 1982 he was recruited to the Israel Defense Forces and joined the
Paratroopers Brigade.
1987-1988: Company commander in the Paratroopers Brigade.
1988-1989: Commander of the anti-tank company in the Paratroopers Brigade.
1993: Operations Officer of the Paratroopers Brigade.
1993-1994: Battalion commander in the Paratroopers Brigade.
1994-1995: Commander of the Paratrooper's Brigade central training base.
1998-1999: Commander of the Eastern Brigade of the Lebanon Liaison Unit.
1999: Commander of the reservist Paratroopers Brigade.
2001-2003: Commander of the Paratroopers Brigade.
2003-2004: Commander of the Otzbat Haesh Division.
2004-2006: Commander of the Gaza Division.
2007-Present: Head of the Operations Division in the IDF Operations
Directorate.
Brigadier General Kochavi is a graduate of the Command and Staff College,
has a BA in Philosophy from Hebrew University and a Masters Degree in Public
Administration from Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. Brig. Gen.
Kochavi has an additional Masters Degree from Johns Hopkins University in
Maryland, U.S.A.
He is married to Yael Kochavi and is father of three children.
4)Obama's last year
By KYLE SMITH
Welcome to 2010: The final year of the Obama administration.
Not literally. For all I know, by 2012 the economy will be hotter than a terrorist’s underpants, Afghanistan will be no more unruly than Indianapolis Colts fans after their coach decided to throw away a perfect season and President Obama will resoundingly win re-election after Diane Sawyer gets Republican nominee Sarah Palin to confess she thought going rogue meant adding some pink makeup to her cheeks.
But a Democrat strategist told Bryon York of the Washington Examiner that House empress Nancy Pelosi was comfortable with losing “20 to 40” seats in the lower chamber as the price for getting health care “reform” passed. A loss of 40 seats would mean flipping the House to GOP hands, and instead of crossing swords with bogeymen like radio talk show hosts or unemployed former governors, the president would for the first time have to deal with a Republican who wields real power. The prospect of Obama trying to wheedle and cajole John Boehner the way Ronald Reagan wooed Tip O’Neill should brighten every conservative’s outlook.
If even Pelosi is writing off up to 40 seats, it should be a bright year for Republican House candidates. Assuming incoming Speaker of the House Boehner or another Republican leader is able to keep his troops united — and lately the Republicans have displayed the harmony of an Olympics-caliber synchronized swimming team — that means an end to the glory days for Team Obama.
The liberal path to our national salvation is about to get itself a nice concrete roadblock.
Tick, tick.
So how much can the Obamatrons get accomplished in the next 12 months? Twelve months, it turns out, isn’t even enough to accomplish something Obama thought he could do with a stroke of a pen — close Guantanamo Bay. Administration officials are now saying that won’t happen until at least 2011.
Tick, tick.
With 60 seats in the Senate and a huge majority in the House, Democrats still needed the entire year to pass their health care bill — and that project isn’t even finished. Lately reports out of the Hill have been saying that the final push to reconcile the House and Senate bills won’t take place until February. If the rejiggered bill loses even three votes in the House, it fails. Pro-life Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mi.) has said he can’t support a bill that is as friendly toward federal abortion funding as the Senate version, and he says he there are 10 other Dems who voted for the House version who feel the same way.
Tick, tick.
Finalizing passage of the health care bill is practically the easiest item on the Obama agenda. If they complete the health care marathon, dazed and gasping and dodging tomatoes thrown by their own constituents, how much regulatory mojo are lefty lawmakers going to have remaining to dive into cap-and-trade?
Politico reports “at least a half-dozen Democrats” in the Senate have told the White House to drop cap-and-trade. Recessions are notoriously harsh on the sales of luxury goods, and the nation is in no mood to spend hundreds of billions of lost economic output in order to buy a magical amulet to ward off global warming. Suggested compromise: Mr. President, why not deal with global warming with a nice interfaith prayer summit? You can invite every imam and Buddhist monk you know — don’t forget the pagans! — to hold hands and ask for a solution from whatever all-inclusive, nonpatriarchal supreme force might be inclined to listen. It’ll have the same effect on global warming as walloping everybody who uses carbon-based energy with a huge tax.
Remember how ambitious the Clinton administration was in its first two years? All that changed when Sheriff Gingrich arrived at the party and took away the keg. Suddenly it was Gingrich who was dictating the agenda — his capital gains tax cuts and welfare reform were the major policy accomplishments of the last six years of Clinton’s presidency.
Ultimately, though, Obama should be grateful if the Republicans do retake the House this year. Poll after poll shows that people like him personally more than they like his policies. If Republicans take away his ability to ram through any more of his ill-advised ideas, the appeal of Obama’s personality might regain precedence in citizens’ minds. He can blame the Republicans for saying no to everything, since that is indeed the party’s primary job, and the American voter can return to the pose he finds most comfortable: Simultaneously castigating the Washington forces that oppose change and enjoying the bounty that comes from stability.
By defeating Obama-ism in 2010, Republicans might find themselves repaid with an Obama victory in 2012.
6)It's Obama's Ball Now
By Kathleen Parker
As the new year commences, two facts emerge: George W. Bush is officially retired as the fault-guy for the nation's ills, and Barack Obama owns the game.
Whether he wants to or not.
Every president deserves a year of grace to adapt to the job and adjust to its Himalayan learning curve. As Obama's first year ends -- almost with a bang, thanks to a lonely Nigerian who found love in jihad -- his grace period is up.
Indeed, depending on how he responds to the security breach that almost brought down a Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam, Obama's presidency is at risk of being rendered prematurely impotent.
If Bush could be blamed for the dot-connecting inadequacies that helped enable the terrorist attacks of 9/11 eight months into his administration, then Obama can fairly be held responsible for the incompetence that allowed a disaffected jihadist to get explosive powder onto a plane.
The banality of our most recent would-be attack is almost too on-the-nose to exploit, but really. The son of a Nigerian banker, already a punch line to all who've been spammed by e-mailers alleging to be Nigerian bankers promising riches, packs his underwear with explosive material? Was this fellow computer-generated by a cartoon character?
If it weren't all so bloody horrifying, the incident would be ridiculous.
Which, come to think of it, is a fair appraisal of the Obama administration's initial performance when faced with a potentially catastrophic terrorist strike. The dots that needed connecting were all but performing the California Raisin dance. Were we ever justified in hoping for better?
National security was never considered Obama's strong suit. Back in September 2008, if I may be excused for quoting myself, I wrote: "I worry that Obama isn't serious enough about terrorism and free markets. ... I worry about Obama's over-intellectualizing -- that he will get lost in a maze of deep thoughts and fail to be decisive when necessary."
Or lost on a golf course, as the case may be.
Obama's open-collared, vacation response from Hawaii was delivered on Katrina time -- about two days too late -- and fell a few links short of reassuring. Something about humans and systems failing. Yes, well, that would about cover it.
Deep breath.
The cool detachment that was so attractive when political opponents were trying to rile Obama is suddenly becoming annoying. Preternaturally unflappable, his demeanor in these circumstances borders on inappropriate. What does it take to get a rise out of Barack Obama? Not that we need bombast and flared nostrils. Calm in the face of potential disaster is laudable, but it's a fine line between executive tranquility and passive nonchalance. Like a tone-deaf disk jockey, Obama plays elevator music when the crowd wants John Philip Sousa.
But, action is being taken, we're told. Investigations are under way and reports are being tabulated. Soon decisions will be forthcoming as to whether we bomb al-Qaeda outposts in Yemen or insist that airline travelers liberate their inner Britneys and go panty-free through security checkpoints.
Full cavity searches can't be far from the minds of bureaucrats looking for ways to create a faux sense of security rather than figuring out how to draw simple inferences from red flags, recently in numbers sufficient to spell out "Allahu Akbar" on a halftime football field.
The brightest among many was the perpetrator's own father's reports, both in person (twice) and by phone to American officials, that his son had become radicalized and might be dangerous. A CIA report describing those concerns apparently never made it through the Byzantine intelligence channels until after the foiled attack on Christmas Day.
Why? It was for just such coordination that the Bush administration four years ago created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which last April came under fire by its then-inspector general, Edward Maguire -- just days before being replaced. Maguire's report may provide the simplest answer to what went wrong.
In addition to criticizing the amount of time intelligence chiefs spend briefing the White House and Congress instead of managing the intelligence apparatus, Maguire blasted the ODNI for bureaucratic fat and financial mismanagement.
In fairness to Obama, Maguire's findings were completed before the president assumed office, but not released publicly until April. Even so, Obama has had plenty of time to tweak the system he now blames for the underwear bomber.
It's his ball now; time to stop dribbling.
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