When All Else Fails Lower Your Standards-Call on Al!

In the aftermath of the November, Fort Hood shooting spree domestic Muslim Organizations acknowledged they allegedly had problems within their ranks.

The ADL calls a claim by the American Muslim community to root out 'evil doers' amongst them has, so far, proven a sham for more anti-Semitism. (See 1 below.)

Mass. Senatorial Candidate debate reveals some strange happenings. (See 2 below.)

Sarah Palin has now joined FOX. This should quicken the diatribe from Liberal haters who can't wait to impale her on their tongues of contempt. Why does such a dumb broad, by their own admission, strike such fear in their heartless souls? Is it because she relates to the "Heartland", something they neither can nor understand why they cannot.

I suspect Sarah is not the brightest bulb in the nation's political chandelier and certainly is not smart enough to have given herself a B+. How do I know this? I read her book and self-assessment. She is too down to earth to engage in such duplicitous guile - know I will be attacked for that.

Meanwhile, David Axelrod remains perplexed why Obama's poll numbers are sinking like the Titanic. Axelrod lives in a delusional White House which Jay Cost suggests might be because Obama suffers from vainglorious arrogance. (See 3 and 3a below.)

Tom Sowell is a hero of mine but he is a black man with darker skin than our president so do I need to get Al Sharpton's read on whether I am a racist?

Furthermore, why did Sen.Reid feel Al Sharpton was the 'go to' guy to obtain cover for his racial/racist comments? Is Reid so out of touch he does not know Al -the Sharpie - has enough racial baggage of his own to fill a 'watermelon' wagon? OOPS I just became a racist and until Obama became president and promised to 'change' racial attitudes I never considered skin tone. In fact I have written many times one of my greatest heros was Martin Luther King and I said it when I lived in Atlanta, visited my home town of Birmingham and am happy to shout it out today.

Let's face it, Al Sharpton , Jesse Jackson et al have wormed their way into the Liberal establishment like termites and their questionable character defines the double standards Liberals embrace when it is one of their own under attack.

A South Carolina legislator asserts the president has lied and he is vilified and censured by Democrats but Reid gets passes. And David Axelrod does not understand why Obama and his party are sinking?

Did not George Bush pay a heavy price for telling everyone to 'read his lips?' Obama told us words matter and I guess we have been reading Obamas lips and don't care too much what are coming out of them.

I have always said when all else fails lower your standards and now I can add - seek out Al the nation's moral center. (See 4, 4a and 4b below.)

Will year end earning disappointments move us out of the eye of the hurricane and will the economic hurricane's backside start to hit us? (See 5 below.)

Will Obamascare turn a large segment of our economy into the underpaid because health care delivery costs will cost the government too much and its cost will escalate in the absence of more competition? A Conservative physician thinks it will. You ponder this. (See 6 below.)

Dick



1)MUSLIM-AMERICAN EFFORTS CALLED 'SHAM'

"As the number of American Muslim extremists allegedly involved in terror plots in the US and abroad continues to grow, major Muslim-American organizations have publicly acknowledged the existence of a problem in their community and vowed to tackle it head on," notes the Anti-Defamation League.


"But the initial effort to root out radicalization -- announced by a few of these groups in the wake of the arrests in Pakistan of five Muslim-American students from Virginia for allegedly attempting to join a terrorist group -- has proven to be a sham and a cover for anti-Semitism and extremism," adds ADL in a statement on the group's website.

The Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) held a major community convention in Chicago in December 2009 where the convention chair called for an Islam "clean and clear of all extremism."

But the convention, which had been specifically identified by American-Muslim leaders as the venue to begin the effort to combat radicalization, failed to seriously address the problem, says ADL.

"In fact, it provided a platform for extremist views...(and) served as a forum for religious scholars and political activists to rail against Jews, call for the eradication of the state of Israel and accuse the US government of waging a war against Muslims at home and abroad."

2)Coakley says no more terrorists in Afghanistan 2010
By Ed Morrissey


Jim Hoft caught an odd statement from Martha Coakley in last night’s debate, a moment that went mainly unnoticed before now. While most of the post-debate attention has focused on Scott Brown’s Reaganesque moment in declaring that the Senate seat doesn’t belong to the Kennedy family or the Democrats but to all Massachusetts voters, Coakley had a Gerald Ford-esque moment on the war in Afghanistan. She declared Afghanistan to be terrorist-free and wants the troops to come home now:


I think we have done what we are going to be able to do in Afghanistan. I think that we should plan an exit strategy. Yes. I’m not sure there is a way to succeed. If the goal was and the mission in Afghanistan was to go in because we believed that the Taliban was giving harbor to terrorists. We supported that. I supported that. They’re gone. They’re not there anymore.


The timing on this was rather poor, considering the deaths of eight CIA officers in Afghanistan just ten days ago at the hands of a suicide bomber. Jim clips together the suicide bomber’s valedictory message made just prior to his attack to underscore the point. The terrorists are definitely still in Afghanistan, both foreign and domestic, and capable of carrying out attacks.


Now, one could make an argument that our presence in Afghanistan provokes terrorist attacks such as the one that killed the eight CIA officers less than two weeks ago. I’d disagree with that — we weren’t in Afghanistan until after al-Qaeda firmly established itself there, with the blessing and the bidirectional support of the Taliban government — but it’s still an arguable point. Coakley didn’t make that argument, however, but instead insisted in quasi-Orwellian fashion that there are no terrorists left in a nation that just had a terrorist attack.


In the 1976 presidential campaign, Gerald Ford lost whatever chance he had for victory by asserting that Poland wasn’t under the direction of the Soviet Union, making him look detached from reality and throwing the election to Jimmy Carter. Hopefully, the voters of Massachusetts will make the same determination about Coakley in the aftermath of this debate and send someone much wiser than Carter or Coakley to Washington.

3) From King Canute to a Cork in the Ocean
By Peter Wehner


White House political adviser David Axelrod granted an interview to Ron Brownstein of National Journal that qualifies as either hyper-spin or an almost clinical state of denial. For example, Axelrod tells Brownstein, “It’s almost impossible to win a referendum on yourself. And the Republicans would like this to be a referendum. It’s not going to be a referendum.”

Yes it will. When a political party controls the presidency and, by wide margins, the House and the Senate, the midterm election will be a referendum on the stewardship of that party. There’s no way to get around that. What’s particularly revealing is that Axelrod and his colleagues, rather than welcoming a referendum on their year in office, are terribly afraid of it. They know that if the dominant issues of the 2010 midterm election are how well Democrats have governed, they will absorb tremendous damage.

Axelrod makes this point in a slightly different way when he says:

If the question is what we’ve been able to achieve, which I think is substantial, versus the ideal of what people hope for or hoped for, that’s a harder race for us. If the choice is between the things we’ve achieved and we’re fighting for and what the other side would deliver, I think that’s very motivational to people.

In other words, if people measure us against perfection, we will fall short. But people won’t be measuring Obama and Democrats against perfection; they will be measuring him/them against the standards Obama set up — for example, insisting that unemployment would not exceed 8 percent in 2009 (it is now 10 percent); that the stimulus package would “create or save” 3.5 million jobs over the course of two years (2.8 million jobs have been lost since it was signed into law); that the deficit and debt would go down on his watch (Obama’s budget will double the debt in five years and triple it in 10 years); and so forth.
Mr. Axelrod also tells Brownstein that next on his checklist is “finish this health care bill successfully.” And after that? “Then we have to go out and sell it. I think we can run on this.”

The problem is that the president has been trying to “sell” ObamaCare for more than half a year. He has spoken out on its behalf repeatedly and in every forum imaginable. And the more Obama attempts to sell the Democrats’ health-care plan, the more unpopular it becomes. After a prolonged and intense debate on this issue, here’s what they have to show for it: “The president’s marks on handling health care, with reforms still under debate in Congress, are even lower [than his overall job approval rating of 46 percent] — just 36 percent approve, while 54 percent disapprove,” according to the latest CBS News poll. “Both of these approval ratings are the lowest of Mr. Obama’s presidency.”

If Axelrod and the Obama White House really believe the problem here is with their sales job rather than with the product they are trying to sell, then they are living in an alternative universe. ObamaCare is responsible in large measure for the devastating Democratic losses in the Virginia and New Jersey governors races. The political environment is so bad right now that even Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat is viewed by Republicans and Democrats as endangered. This is a remarkable political development.

Finally, Mr. Axelrod says this:

In certain ways we are at the mercy of forces that are larger than things we can control. If we see steady months of jobs growth between now and next November, I think the picture will be different than if we don’t. I think Ronald Reagan learned that lesson in 1982. We’re not immune to the physics of all of this. But I’m guardedly optimistic that we are going to see that progress.

Here’s a pretty good rule of thumb: when senior White House political advisers begin to use phrases like “we are at the mercy of forces that are larger than we can control” and “we’re not immune to the physics of all this,” you can assume they are in deep trouble. That is especially the case for those who work for a president who proclaimed that his victory would mark the moment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Now Obama and Axelrod portray themselves like corks in the ocean. They invoke the laws of physics to explain why unemployment is in double digits. It turns out it is a quick journey from political messianism to political fatalism.

Axelrod’s words are a revealing (if unwitting) concession: he and his colleagues understand that they are overmatched by events and, in office for less than a year, they are scrambling to find excuses for the problems they face. But the fault, dear David, is not in the stars, but in yourselves. There will be a high political price to pay for this — perhaps starting next week but almost certainly by next


3a)The Real Barack Obama
By Jay Cost


When President Obama indicated that he had no problem with secretive House-Senate negotiations on health care - there was outrage from several quarters. Rich Lowry wrote that it's a sign that Obama is "insincere to the point of cynicism." Peter Wehner suggested that this broken pledge "annihilates...the belief that he embodied a new, uplifting kind of politics." Outrage was not confined to the right. CNN's Jack Cafferty ripped Obama's openness pledge as a "lie," and the whole affair pushed C-SPAN from its usual role as sideline observer to active participant.

Outrage aside, was anybody surprised by this broken pledge? After all, this is the President who promised to find a campaign finance agreement with John McCain, then never tried. This is the President who said that the old ways wouldn't do, then staffed his new administration with Clinton era retreads. This is the President who promised a post-partisan era, but waited less than a week into his new term to initiate a "message war" against his political opponents.

Politicians break their campaign promises all the time. It's part of an age-old electoral strategy: promise everything to the voters during the campaign, and leave the worry about breaking them for the next election.

What's noteworthy about President Obama is that his campaign acknowledged this bad habit, then earnestly pledged that he would be so very different. The sounds and images of his campaign - from the chants of "Yes We Can" to the stage for his convention address to the artwork - suggested that the country was about to elect somebody more special than Rutherford Hayes or Hillary Clinton or Warren Harding or John McCain. Barack Obama wasn't like other politicians. He was superior.

This is what he said when he announced his presidential campaign in Springfield, Illinois in February, 2007:

I know there are those who don't believe we can do all these things. I understand the skepticism. After all, every four years, candidates from both parties make similar promises, and I expect this year will be no different...
That is why this campaign can't only be about me. It must be about us - it must be about what we can do together. This campaign must be the occasion, the vehicle, of your hopes, and your dreams...This campaign has to be about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship, restoring our sense of common purpose, and realizing that few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.

By ourselves, this change will not happen. Divided, we are bound to fail.

But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible....

As Lincoln organized the forces arrayed against slavery, he was heard to say: "Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought to battle through."

That is our purpose here today.

That's why I'm in this race.


The implication of this rhetoric is clear. Most candidates overpromise then underdeliver. That's precisely why we need Barack Obama. He will be the next Abraham Lincoln, an extraordinary leader who will not only bring peace and prosperity, but will restore our sense of common purpose.

Since he burst onto the national scene years ago, people have wondered who is the real Barack Obama? What makes him tick? What's the true story?

The answer should be clear by now: he's just a politician. There's no secret, hidden mystery to the 44th President. He's not a crypto-communist nor is he the next Abraham Lincoln. He's a politician just like any other. He said what he thought he needed to say to get into office, now he's doing what he thinks he needs to be do to stay there. If that creates problems for 2012, he'll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

Hats off to him for a near-flawless execution of an audacious campaign strategy. Since nobody knew anything about him, why not claim the mantle of Lincoln? Nobody could point to a governing record to suggest that he was not in fact a leader for the ages - so why not claim to be? Other pols promise the sun, the moon, and the stars in the sky, but Barack Obama would do them one better: he'd promise the eschaton. Not only would an Obama administration grow the economy and end the war, it would reclaim the meaning of citizenship!

This strategy was either cynical or arrogant, depending upon whether the President really thought he could do all these amazing things. Let's hope he didn't. Let's hope he was being cynical, for at least it would suggest the President's sense of himself is not wildly out of proportion to reality.

To function well, this country does not require great leaders who will reclaim the meaning of citizenship, but it has use for good ones who can leave things a little better than when they found them. History has shown that good leaders are often cynical, crafty politicians who are motivated by their own ambitions. Our superior system of government expertly links their private interests to the public good, and thus can bring out the best in them.

But if this President is so vainglorious as to believe his campaign's claims about his greatness, we have reason to worry. With problem piling up on top of problem, the last thing we need is a leader so hopelessly enamored of himself that he actually presumes to be the next Lincoln.


4)"Notional" Security"
By Thomas Sowell

The latest "screw-up" that let a man with explosives get on a plane on Christmas day is only part of a larger laxness and irresponsibility when it comes to national security. This administration pays lip service to national security and gives out with a lot of rhetorical notions that makes it notional security instead of national security.

The Muslim major who was arrested for the murders of American soldiers at Fort Hood had left so many clues to his hatred of this country that all you had to do was count the dots, without even connecting them, to see where he was coming from. But for a fellow officer to alert higher authorities to the danger would have meant risking damage to his own career moreso than to that of Major Nidal Hasan.

That is because we have become so obsessed with political correctness that both common sense and self-preservation have to take a back seat. We don't dare "profile" anybody going through security checks because that's not politically correct. Far better to be blown to smithereens than to be politically incorrect.

Probably the country with the strongest security checks for airline passengers-- and the strongest reason for such checks-- is Israel. Israel profiles. I have been to Israel more than once and it is clear that they profile.

Fortunately, my wife and I obviously don't fit their profile, whatever that may be. Others who have been to Israel are amazed when I tell them that we have gone through Israeli security four times and they have never opened our luggage.

That is all the more surprising, since we take a lot of luggage. We have stopped in Israel while on trips completely around the world, including countries both above and below the equator, so we had to have clothing for hot weather and cold weather, since the seasons are the opposite in the northern and southern hemispheres. Moreover, I carry a lot of photographic equipment in a large, separate piece of luggage.

In short, our luggage could carry enough explosives to blow up any building in the country. But, whatever their security system and whatever their profile, they didn't seem to want to waste any time on us.

The last time we flew into Israel was from Cairo, where the Israeli security officials at the Cairo airport detained the lady in line in front of us for 45 minutes, opened her luggage, spread the contents across the counter, and asked her all sorts of questions. When they had finally finished with her and my wife and I stepped up to the counter, the official in charge waved us on impatiently, saying, "Hurry up, you'll miss the plane."

This was no special treatment for us. They had no idea who we were. We were just not the kind of people they spent time on, for whatever reason.

Recently, an Israeli security official was interviewed on Fox News Channel by Mike Huckabee. The official said that he has testified before Congress and offered to help with suggestions on how the American airport security system could be improved-- and he clearly thought it needed a lot of improvement.

Apparently the only response he got from American security officials was a polite letter. "They didn't tell me to go to Hell," he said. "They were polite."

There is no stronger indication of danger than officials who don't want to hear what anybody else has to say, even when those who offer to help have a system that works better than ours.

The fundamental issue goes beyond the Fort Hood massacre or the Christmas bomber. These are just symptoms of a larger set of attitudes and expediences reflecting the same outlook.

Putting terrorists on trial in American criminal courts, under rules designed for American citizens, tells you all you need to know about whether the Obama administration is serious about security or is still playing the political correctness game.

Terrorists are not covered by the Geneva convention for the simple reason that they do not abide by the Geneva convention. They are enemy combatants and you do not turn enemy combatants loose to go back to killing Americans while the war is still on-- not if you are being serious, as distinguished from being political or ideological.

4a)Tucker Carlson: A moral arbiter for our age, Rev. Al Sharpton
By Tucker Carlson


Al Sharpton in Brooklyn, NY in 1989.You can bet that one of the first calls Harry Reid made after his “Negro dialect” comments surfaced was to Al Sharpton. Who knows what sort of deal the two worked out, but Sharpton quickly came to Reid’s aid, dismissing the majority leader’s gaffe as a minor blemish on an otherwise pristine record of support for civil rights.

In the days since, Sharpton has used his considerable PR skills to Reid’s benefit on various talk shows. Sharpton’s quotes wound up in countless news stories.

To some extent, the strategy has worked: If Al Sharpton says you’re not a racist, then what’s the problem?

For one thing, Sharpton himself. Now, I take a back seat to no man in my affection for Al Sharpton as a person and a character study (evidence here: The league of extraordinary gentlemen). Sharpton is a smart guy. In some ways he’s a good guy. But a moral arbiter? Let’s not get carried away.

You could write a book about Sharpton’s brushes with the dark side, and indeed some have. The headlines are faded but still resonant to those who lived them: Tawana Brawley, Crowne Heights, Freddie’s Fashion Mart.

If you’re too young to remember the names, spend an hour on Google and treat yourself. But for serious scholars of Sharptonalia, two episodes in particular sum up Sharpton’s public career, and at the same time (in one of my least favorite television news cliches) Raise Powerful Questions about whether he ought to be wagging a finger at anyone else.

The first is the drug tape. A federal sting operation in the 1980s unexpectedly caught Sharpton, dressed in a cowboy hat with a cigar in his mouth, as he had an extended conversation with an FBI agent posing a cocaine kingpin.

“Every kilogram we bring in — $3,500 to you. How does that sound?” asks the ersatz dealer, as Sharpton nods on camera. “So if we bring in 10, you’ll make $35,000.”

“I hear you,” Sharpton responds.

Sharpton threatened legal action after HBO aired the tape, claiming there was a “second tape” that exonerated him. That tape has yet to surface.

The second episode concerns a deposition Sharpton gave about 10 years ago during one of his many legal entanglements. The New York Times ran a hilarious but underpublicized story about it at the time in their Metro section (here: Asking how Sharpton pays for those suits; case offers glimpses of his finances). The whole thing is well worth reading, but here’s the highlight:

In the middle of a tough exchange about Sharpton’s finances, the opposing counsel pressed Sharpton about what possessions he owned. Sharpton’s answer: In effect, none.

But what about all of those handsome suits you wear? asked the lawyer. Surely you own those. Correction, replied Sharpton. I have “access” to those suits.

The transcript does not record whether he smiled as he said it – though for what it’s worth, every time I see Sharpton on television lecturing America about who is or who is not morally fit for public office, I smile. Broadly.

4) Harry Reid and Race
By Rich Lowry

In his State of the Union response to Pres. George W. Bush a few years ago, Harry Reid included a heartwarming anecdote about a kid in his old hometown saying he wants to grow up to be like him. Did the ten-year-old realize that he, too, could be charmless and inarticulate and still be an awesomely powerful politician?

The furor over Reid's comments about then-candidate Barack Obama being "light-skinned" and not speaking in "a Negro dialect" says less about the Senate majority leader's racial attitudes than his already well-advertised tin - or is it iron? titanium? some metallic substance yet unknown to man? - ear. If nuance and verbal intelligence were necessary to success on Capitol Hill, Reid would have quit long ago.

But since when is a history of saying dumb things a defense in a racial controversy? Since when is the truth even a defense?

TheRoot.com, the website of Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard professor last seen accusing a white cop of racism for the offense of showing up at his door, published an elaborate defense of Reid. It cited the 1993 paper "When White Voters Evaluate Black Candidates: The Processing Implications of Candidate Skin Color, Prejudice, and Self-Monitoring" to support Reid's contention that Obama's lightness would help him with voters. As for "Negro dialect," TheRoot.com argues it's a catchier phrase than "black or African-American vernacular English," and what harm comes from "using dated language with no bad intent"?

No conservative Republican should test this tolerance for archaic speech. Reid's idiocy is excused, fundamentally, by his political positions. In absolving him, Obama cited "the passionate leadership he's shown on issues of social justice." Al Sharpton, who's built a career on stoking distracting racial controversies, advised that "these comments should not distract America from its continued focus on securing health care."

Real racism has been almost entirely eliminated from respectable American public life. With no one defending segregated lunch counters anymore, the accusation of racism is left mostly to hang on infelicitous phrases, legitimate policy disagreements, or the airing of uncomfortable truths.

That means the charge has become unavoidably subjective, and those with the most credibility to make it - black politicians and civil-rights groups - all lean to the left. They've turned it into a handy political tool wielded only against their opponents. Reid could practically perform in a minstrel show, and the NAACP would defend him as long as he remained a reliably liberal vote.

It isn't just that Reid is treated differently than Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott, whose disastrously foolish praise of Strom Thurmond's segregationist 1948 presidential campaign spiraled into his resignation from leadership. It's that the Left read more meaning into a minor candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee distributing a CD with a parody song called "Barack the Magic Negro" than into Reid's earnest use of the term. It's that there was more outrage on the left over fabricated Rush Limbaugh quotes endorsing slavery than over comments Reid doesn't deny making.

The fraudulent Rush quotes illustrate the next logical step in the charade: Accusing someone of racism based on the belief that the person somehow should be racist. The anti-Obamacare protests of the summer had racial motives attributed to them, even though they were notably absent of racial content. One protester who ostentatiously carried his rifle outside an Obama event in Phoenix was deemed a racist threat to the president, even though he himself was black.

Taking the Reid flap to its absurdist conclusion, The Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates concluded that GOP objections to Reid's comments themselves prove "that the GOP is not simply still infected with the vestiges of white supremacy and racism, but is neither aware of the infection, nor understands the disease." Maybe one of Reid's Republican critics can be made to resign for his insensitive criticisms.

Most racial controversies are eventually described as "teachable moments." If only the lesson of this one were that the politicized game of taking racial offense deserves permanent retirement.

Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review.

5)Storm Clouds Forming Over 2010
By Ron Coby

As we enter 2010, the sun shines brightly on both the US stock market and the global economy. However, dark massive clouds are piling up on the horizon: A serious foreboding of a storm coming -- and coming soon. It’s too early to tell when the tempest will descend, but winds are building and it's time to get prepared. So -- are you prepared?

The first sign of warning is the very low VIX (volatility Index). The VIX reading as I write is where it was in late 2007, right before the mother of all market tsunamis hit global markets. This low VIX simply means that complacency about the dark clouds forming is way too high. It’s an early warning sign to get your disaster plan in place right now.

Another storm portent is the extreme bullish sentiment readings.The recent investor intelligence polls show the lowest number of bears since 1987 -- and we all know the famous stock market crash that followed. The bearish readings are even below the record low number of bulls registered in March '09, right at the bottom. The stock market has rallied over 60% since that March low because everyone was bearish. Now everyone is bullish. So isn’t it possible that the market could drop 20-50% in 2010 from wherever it finally tops out? You'll need a reliable sell signal to let you know when you need protection from the violent storm before it hits and wipes your portfolio out.

One of the biggest baddest clouds on the horizon is the seasonality of the stock market. Over the past decade, stocks have started some heavy storms in the first few months of the new year. Most recently was the 1400-point loss in early 2008 and last year’s gigantic loss. The total loss in the Dow Jones Industrial Average -- which began in the new year through to the ultimate bottom on March 9, 2009 -- was a complete market crash. So you better be ready for a possible Katrina-like market hurricane.

Another, somewhat freaky sign is how poorly the DJIA performs in years ending in "00." Since 1900, nine of the last 11 years ending in "00" showed a decline of nearly 15%. The year that resembles the present most closely is 1930. Both periods have had volcanic market eruptions and a resulting lava flow of deflation. When you observe the 2008, you'll see some similarities to the 1929 crash -- but in slower motion. The giant multi-month rally since March 2009 also has some similarities to the early 1930 rally of nearly 50%. The DJIA declined 38.63% from the opening price in 1930 to the DJIA intra-year low. Folks, you need to prepare yourself for the worst.Finally, the blackest storm cloud on the horizon is the alarmingly similar rising wedge pattern today with the one in October 2007. Once that pattern broke to the downside in November 2007, a hurricane of epic proportions hit the stock market and devastated the entire global economy. In other words, we've seen all of these warnings signs before the last major storm that hit the entire global financial system.

In the Grail ETF & Equity Investor program, Denny Lamson and I are taking early precautions by advising a high level of cash. The inverse ETFs we've recommended so far are like storing extra food and water before a possible tsunami hits. Once we get a sell signal from our Grail Timing indicator on the daily chart, we will be advising our subscribers to take even more extreme cautionary measures. Again, you must prepare for the worst while hoping for the best.

If a violent storm does hit, we'll be nailing down the windows of your portfolio as the hurricane gets closer. The nails we'll be using are the DOG ETF for the DJIA and the TWM ETF for the Russell 2000. Additionally, we'll look at the SH ETF for the S&P 500 and the QID ETF for the NASDAQ 100. Finally, the EEV ETF will give us some downside exposure to the emerging markets. But remember, we won't start hammering until our weather vane -- the Grail -- gives us solid Sell Signals.

In summary, we don’t know what kind of head winds in the market we face. Will there be a violent storm like the one in 2008, or a mild one like that of 1950, or something in between? Will the storm simply pass us by with the sun shinning on the bull market once again? Nobody knows for sure, but there are some monster clouds on the horizon. You need to have a plan in place in case the global economy is laid flat once again. If you're concerned about Tsunami in 2010 and need help riding thru the storm, sign up for a free trial to the Grail ETF & Equity Investor program today. Don’t wait. It’s never too early to prepare. And I'm sure you remember -- Tsunamis hit fast and hard.

6)The Truth about ObamaCare
By John Lilly

A senior Obama Administration official almost let the cat out of the bag about the real impact of Obama-style health care "reform." Here's the background.


The three most important things in real estate are location, location, and location. In health care, one could argue that it's reimbursements, reimbursements, and reimbursements. One in every six workers receives a paycheck that depends on physician and hospital reimbursement for services. Except for Medicaid, Medicare reimbursement rates are the lowest of all entities that reimburse physicians and hospitals. All private insurance and Medicare Advantage reimbursements are higher than traditional Medicare ones. Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans take a $425-billion cut in the current health care reform legislation.


In 2008, a Physician Foundation survey found that 36% of physicians said Medicare reimbursement is less than their cost of providing care, and 65% of physicians said that Medicaid reimbursement is less than their cost of providing care. Raise your hand if you work for free. Then why is the administration asking one-sixth of all U.S. workers to do just that?


Larry Summers, the Obama administration's Director of the National Economic Council, spoke at The Economic Club of Washington at their April 2009 meeting. C-SPAN was there, and at roughly minute 41, Summers said the following:


That's why health care reform is so important because a large fraction of the federal budget is health care and if health care spending is growing three to four percent a year faster than the rest of the economy then there is no way that the federal budget can be under control. And if you try to control federal spending without controlling overall health spending you know what's going to happen. The people in the federal programs aren't going to be able to ...



Then he paused before continuing:


The health care system isn't going to want to serve the people in the federal programs. That's why the health care agenda is crucial to the long term financial sustainability agenda.


I think it is obvious that Summers was going to say that "the people in the federal programs aren't going to be able to find a doctor if you have Medicare," but he rephrased it before his original thought came out of his mouth. When he talks about overall health spending, he is including all public and private entities that reimburse physicians and hospitals. Federal spending includes just Medicare and Medicaid.


When Medicare reimbursement does not cover the cost of doing business, guess who will have a tough time finding a doctor. If there is a choice, then doctors, like any rational consumer, will prefer plans like Medicare Advantage and private insurance, which have higher reimbursement rates. The administration's idea of holding down costs is forcing all reimbursements down to Medicare levels or lower. They know that if there are alternatives, patients who are stuck with traditional Medicare won't be able to find a doctor. Recently, one of the Mayo Clinics in Arizona stopped taking Medicare because it's a money-loser. Mayo's hospital and four clinics in Arizona, including the one that stopped taking Medicare, lost $120 million on Medicare patients last year. The program's payments covered only 50% of the cost of treating elderly primary-care patients.


If all reimbursement rates are forced down to Medicare rates or lower, then get ready for five-minute doctor visits and waiting times measured in weeks and months before appointments for major diagnostic testing like MRIs.


Unfortunately, the Republicans do not have the answers, either. Their proposals will not control costs. Only when you introduce free-market competition and eliminate the current reimbursement system will you get lower costs. That will require a fundamental change in Medicare and all reimbursement systems.


John Lilly, MBA, D.O. is a family physician and the vice president of The YOUNG Conservatives of America (tycoa.com