Those Who Don't Learn From History Are Doomed to Repeat It

Did the U.S. escape several more vicious hits from al-Qaeda after 9/11 because of the CIA using enhanced interrogation techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammad? Even the Washington Post now say "yes." If one of the major organs of the mainstream media can figure this out, then what are the motives and goals of those seeking to prosecute CIA agents who conducted these programs? Do they want more Americans killed? Do they want this country destroyed or at least neutralized in world affairs? Do they live in a fantasy world where you don't even know that really bad guys are shooting at us? The citizens of this country better get serious about finding the answers to these questions and doing something about it or we will be repeating 9/11 all over again, and again, and again...

www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/08/acknowledging_the_obvious.asp

Obama's Problem - American Exceptionalism Stirs Anew

Fouad Ajami from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies sets out Obama's political dilemma better than I have seen elsewhere. Here is a quote from the longer article which clearly summarizes what Obama and his elitist colleagues are facing:

"American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by which a leader is anointed, then the populace steps out of the way, and the anointed one puts his political program in place. In the American tradition, the "mandate of heaven" is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them. The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics.

Those protesters in those town-hall meetings have served notice that Mr. Obama's charismatic moment has passed. Once again, the belief in that American exception that set this nation apart from other lands is re-emerging. Health care is the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it is an unease with the way the verdict of the 2008 election was read by those who prevailed. It shall be seen whether the man swept into office in the moment of national panic will adjust to the nation's recovery of its self-confidence."

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574370301468452872.html

No Good Deed Will Go Unpunished

When I was in Burkina Faso in 2008 I was surprised at the high regard for President Bush by Africans, in contrast to the seemingly universal brickbats he was receiving at home. The reason was one of the great unreported stories in the world - the success of the programs in Africa to combat HIV/AIDS he championed. In 2003 President Bush, with the war against terrorism going full bore (we invaded Iraq in 2003), announced a $15 billion initiative to stem a disaster in the making in Africa from HIV/AIDS. And it worked. As the article below points out, not only have 1 million people been saved, but the incidence of new cases in places like Uganda has been cut from 20% of the population to 6%. How do liberals respond to this good news? Either with deafening silence or "Bush lied; people died." Amazing! Whatever the reaction here, though, there are a lot of people in Africa who remember and I was privileged to meet a few of them. On their behalf, thank you Mr. President.

townhall.com/columnists/DrPaulKengor/2009/08/28/round_two_on_bush_and_aids

Never Forget!

Apparently the Obama Administration has flown under the radar with a plan to observe 9/11 as a National Day of Service. Instead of a sober remembrance of the horror visited on innocent Americans by murderous jihadists and a time to resolve "Never Again!" we will instead be celebrating community organizing, foodbanks, etc. Not at my house! As one who watched live while a hijacked jet plowed into one of the World Trade Center towers, I will never view 9/11 as anything but the modern Pearl Harbor that it was, waking up this country to the scourge of fanatical Islamic terrorism. I am ashamed of my government for so cynically abandoning the memory of the 3000. Never Forget!

spectator.org/archives/2009/08/24/obamas-plan-to-desecrate-911

Getting Married Young

Are Americans waiting too long to get married? That's the question discussed in a thought-provoking new article in Christianity Today. Mark Regenerus writes that: "In societies like ours that exhibit lengthy economic prosperity, men and women alike begin to lose motivation to marry and have children, and thus avoid one or both. Pragmatically, however, the institution of marriage remains a foundational good for individuals and communities." This has led, among other things, to a flouting of Biblical precepts on sex, an extended adolescence of males, and problems having children and/or healthy children when couples finally get serious about marriage and family in their 30s and 40s. His answer - more people should be getting married at a younger age.

As one who married young, I can give firsthand testimony that it can be a difficult walk at times, but with many rewarding moments as well. This is a provocative article and one well worth reading by Christians and those interested in the vitality of American society.

www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/august/16.22.html

Townhalls: You Can't Fool All the People All the Time

The uproar at townhall meetings across the country are a living illustration of the old adage: you can fool all of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time. Dick Hughes in an opinion piece in today's Statesman Journal relates that he moderated a recent townhall for Rep. Schrader and concluded that the protests are genuine, not manufactured. www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20090820/COLUMN0704/908200317/1049/OPINION He hits the mother lode when he reports that many of the protesters simply don't trust their government.

The U.S. has always been a pragmatic country and its citizens have always been interested in getting things done efficiently and moving on with their lives. Rightly or wrongly, a majority of Americans believed that the country was broken at the end of President Bush's second term and they were ready for a change. Obama campaigned to the center and said he would be the great uniter, the one who fixed the broken machinery of government. But once in office, he has been anything but a pragmatic centrist. He has embarked on several of the most massive and untested programs ever devised (cap and trade, government health care) and cannot answer even basic questions about them as noted by Mr. Hughes in his column. Americans feel they have been bamboozled and they don't like it. They thought they were handing off their car to a mechanic who was going to fix it and get them on the road again and instead, he has taken the car and disposed of it, wants them to buy a whole new kind of vehicle (note: not a car) and won't tell them the price tag or anything else about it. Not surprisingly, they are not buying.

Dorothy Rabinowitz, writing in the Wall Street Journal, had a great quote:

"The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character." online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342653428074782.html

I think the same is true of the whole Democratic Left. You can't fool all the people all the time, but they are so out of touch and arrogant that they are going to try.

Liberal Economists Read the Tea Leaves

We have our own local liberal "economic" columnist Ron Eachus who, if he were playing professional baseball, would be on his way back to Single A Poughkeepsie with a .078 average on economic questions. Things aren't much better, though, in The Show. The New York Times has its own economic columnist from the Twilight Zone, none other than the Nobel prize-winning, Enron-advising, Paul Krugman, who James Taranto delightfully skewers in today's Best of the Web in the Wall Street Journal:

Two Papers in One!

• "There's a problem: conservative politicians, clinging to an out-of-date ideology--and, perhaps, betting (wrongly) that their constituents are relatively well positioned to ride out the storm--are standing in the way of action. No, I'm not talking about Bob Corker, the Senator from Nissan--I mean Tennessee--and his fellow Republicans. . . . I am, instead, talking about Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and her economic officials, who have become the biggest obstacles to a much-needed European rescue plan."--former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, New York Times, Dec. 15, 2008
• "Why is Europe falling short? Poor leadership is part of the story. European banking officials, who completely missed the depth of the crisis, still seem weirdly complacent. And to hear anything in America comparable to the know-nothing diatribes of Germany's finance minister you have to listen to, well, Republicans."--Krugman, New York Times, March 16, 2009
• "The European economy bounced back with unexpected strength in the second quarter, buoying hopes that a worldwide recession was drawing to a close. The sharp improvement from the first quarter underscored just how far Europe and indeed the global economy had come since a harrowing free fall in late 2008. Underlying the strong reading were solid performances in France and Germany, each of whose economies grew slightly in the second quarter, according to government data released Thursday."--news story, New York Times, Aug. 14, 2009

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574356512455523766.html

Maybe reading coffee grounds or chicken bones would be more effective?

Let Passengers Fight Back

You may have seen this story in the last few weeks. A Continental Express jet from Houston to Minneapolis-St. Paul was diverted to Rochester, MN because of bad weather at MSP. Things went downhill from there when the airline kept the passengers on the commuter jet for six hours without restrooms (toilet full), food, and all to the the lovely scent of dirty diapers! Amazing. And this is not the first time that the airlines have done this.

Some are calling for a new Federal regulation to set out how long the cattle - er, passengers - can be held captive on a plane. townhall.com/columnists/DebraJSaunders/2009/08/16/the_flight_2816_fiasco I think a better approach would be to let the passengers fight back by enacting a new Federal statute that would create a special class for class action lawsuit purposes of all the people on a commercial flight held on board for longer than say 2 hours. This way they would only need to hire one lawyer and try the case once, preventing the airline from using the "divide-and-conquer" approach that wears down individuals through attrition. The statute should provide for minimum damages of $10,000 per passenger (a nice round number) plus attorney fees to a prevailing plaintiff class. I would love to see what a jury thinks about this kind of treatment by an airline. I bet that airlines would quickly pay much more attention to stranded passengers than they did to the poor folks in the Continental Express debacle. And no expansion of the Federal bureaucracy. A win for passengers and for the general tax-paying public! Think about it.

Breakthrough Against Breast Cancer

Some welcome good news on the fight against breast cancer - U.S. researchers at MIT and the Broad Institute have isolated a chemical compound that nails breast cancer stem cells. These cells are the reason that breast cancer recurs and the discovery could lead to a major new weapon in the successful treatment of breast cancer. Nice job! Keep up the good work.

www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE57C4XA20090814

Obama's End Game

Mark Steyn discusses the Big O's end game after all the calculated confusion is stripped away from his legislative proposals:

"The end-game is very obvious. If you expand the bureaucratic class and you expand the dependent class, you can put together a permanent electoral majority. By “dependent”, I don’t mean merely welfare, although that’s a good illustration of the general principle. In political terms, a welfare check is a twofer: you’re assuring the votes both of the welfare recipient and of the vast bureaucracy required to process his welfare. But extend that principle further, to the point where government intrudes into everything: a vast population is receiving more from government (in the form of health care or education subventions) than it thinks it contributes, while another vast population is managing the ever expanding regulatory regime (a federal energy-efficiency code, a government health bureaucracy) and another vast population remains, nominally, in the private sector but, de facto, dependent on government patronage of one form or another – say, the privately owned franchisee of a government automobile company, or the designated “community assistance” organization for helping poor families understand what programs they’re eligible for. Either way, what you get from government – whether in the form of a government paycheck, a government benefit or a government contract – is a central fact of your life."
www.steynonline.com/content/view/2341/26/

It's worth reading the whole article, but the bolded sentence sums it up in one nice memory nugget. This is why the details are not important to him or Pelosi or Reid - it's the expansion of government that assures a perpetual Democratic majority from captive voters, not the merits of any particular program. Thus, the faster, the better - and screw the details.

OK - So What Have You Got?

One of the push back lines you hear from liberals on health care is: "What have you guys got for healthcare?" Fair question. How about this:

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html

Why Seniors Are Upset About Obamacare - and the Rest of Us Should be

Why is it that the American elite always likes to play "Me too!" aping Europe, usually a day late and the proverbial dollar short. Europe (and Canada) are beginning to realize that their health care systems are not the best and are moving towards privatization, if haltingly. Consider these sobering facts in a first-rate article in the City Journal written by a Canadian:

"My health-care prejudices crumbled not in the classroom but on the way to one. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute. Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care. I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic—with a three-year wait list; or the woman needing a sleep study to diagnose what seemed like sleep apnea, who faced a two-year delay; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks."

"Nor were the problems I identified unique to Canada—they characterized all government-run health-care systems. Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled—48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. A while back, I toured a public hospital in Washington, D.C., with Tim Evans, a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe. The hospital was dark and dingy, but Evans observed that it was cleaner than anything in his native England. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave—when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity—15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren’t available. And so on"

"Rick Baker helps people, and sometimes even saves lives. He describes a man who had a seizure and received a diagnosis of epilepsy. Dissatisfied with the opinion—he had no family history of epilepsy, but he did have constant headaches and nausea, which aren’t usually seen in the disorder—the man requested an MRI. The government told him that the wait would be four and a half months. So he went to Baker, who arranged to have the MRI done within 24 hours—and who, after the test discovered a brain tumor, arranged surgery within a few weeks.

Baker isn’t a neurosurgeon or even a doctor. He’s a medical broker, one member of a private sector that is rushing in to address the inadequacies of Canada’s government care. Canadians pay him to set up surgical procedures, diagnostic tests, and specialist consultations, privately and quickly. “I don’t have a medical background. I just have some common sense,” he explains. “I don’t need to be a doctor for what I do. I’m just expediting care.”

He tells me stories of other people whom his British Columbia–based company, Timely Medical Alternatives, has helped—people like the elderly woman who needed vascular surgery for a major artery in her abdomen and was promised prompt care by one of the most senior bureaucrats in the government, who never called back. “Her doctor told her she’s going to die,” Baker remembers. So Timely got her surgery in a couple of days, in Washington State. Then there was the eight-year-old badly in need of a procedure to help correct her deafness. After watching her surgery get bumped three times, her parents called Timely. She’s now back at school, her hearing partly restored. “The father said, ‘Mr. Baker, my wife and I are in agreement that your star shines the brightest in our heaven,’ ” Baker recalls. “I told that story to a government official. He shrugged. He couldn’t fu*king care less.”

Not everyone has kind words for Baker. A woman from a union-sponsored health coalition, writing in a local paper, denounced him for “profiting from people’s misery.” When I bring up the comment, he snaps: “I’m profiting from relieving misery.” Some of the services that Baker brokers almost certainly contravene Canadian law, but governments are loath to stop him. “What I am doing could be construed as civil disobedience,” he says. “There comes a time when people need to lead the government.”

www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html

Indeed the time to lead government has now arrived in the United States and if you don't make your opinions known to your elected representatives, then we too will go through what the Europeans and Canadians are only now realizing is a badly flawed medical system where the needs of the patients are not put first. As always, it is more attractive for the politicians to spend money on pet projects than the dreary subject of doctor shortages, long lines, and substandard (It's "free!" Right.) The above photo just sent to me by a friend shows Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this trio, helping the handicapped Professor Gates down the stairs, while the President, heedless of the infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of alleged racial profiling, strideing ahead on his own. This picture becomes a metaphor for ObamaCare. The elderly are left in the back, with only the kindness of the Crowleys of the world, the stand up guys, to depend on. The government has other priorities. I hope you will read the whole article and realize that the older you are, or the more you or one of your family members needs high level medical care, Obamacare is going to leave you standing at the door because you are not cost effective and it is the system - not you - that's important.

The Start of a Bad Fishing Trip

Keep Those E-mails Coming!

You have probably read of the new White House website for reporting your suspicious neighbors who oppose government health care, but Mark Steyn helps us out with the URLs of a number of lesser known White House websites for reporting all kinds of things:

"Reporting dissent is the highest form of patriotism! Is your neighbor suspiciously “well-dressed”? Is he mouthing off about cancer-survival rates under socialized-medical systems while wearing a cravat? Give us his name, and we’ll give you his spats! Just go to flag@whitehouse.gov, not to be confused with flagging@whitehouse.gov, which is the e-mail address for reporting President Obama’s latest approval rating. Go to flay@whitehouse.gov if you’d like Speaker Pelosi to walk across your back as a whip-wielding SS dominatrix barking “Vee haff vays of making you tokk less casually, dummkopf!” Go to flange@whitehouse.gov if you need parts for your new government car, or your new government hip replacement. Go to flaunt@whitehouse.gov if you’d like a special preview of President Obama’s latest bare-chested pictorial for Vanity Fair. Go to flatulent@whitehouse.gov if you’d like to report your neighbor’s cow for excessive CO2 emissions.'" article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTZjMWFjYWRlYmIyMGFhZDY0YzVjNzFjYWE4ODU2MmM=

Keep those e-mails coming folks! I'm sure you can be creative and I'm sure the Big O will enjoy them.

Faith Fatigue?

Chuck Colson has a great column today about Christian apathy. The essence is:

"The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence...from bondage to spiritual faith...from spiritual faith to courage...from courage to liberty...from liberty to abundance...from abundance to selfishness...from selfishness to complacency…from complacency to apathy...from apathy to dependency...from dependency back to bondage.

So what stage are we in? Reeverts thinks we are entering the stage of apathy. And I hate to say it, but I agree. I am finding growing apathy among believers."

informz.net/pfm/archives/archive_824127.html

Me three - I am afraid I also agree with this assessment. We need to be about expanding God's Kingdom daily. It may be only in a small way, but Jesus calls us to be outward bound and too many Christians, myself included, are content to sit back and build our little kingdom and forget all about His. Not good. Read the article, then get up from your chair and do something for His Kingdom!

Oregon's Ship Has Come In

We have a budding marine science center in our midst. Newport just got the good news that it has been chosen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to be the home port for NOAA's Pacific research fleet. (www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/noaas_arrival_will_mean_econom.html). NOAA, among other things, brings us weather reports and hurricane warnings, and conducts a lot of basic research on the oceans and atmosphere. The move will bring an influx of highly-trained scientists and the provisioning and maintenance of the ships will be a welcome economic shot in the arm to Newport. The OSU/Hatfield Marine Science Center and the Oregon Coast Aquarium began putting Newport on map for marine science, but the NOAA move will give a huge boost to Newport and Oregon's reputation as a national marine science center.

We Can Do It! Yes We Can!

The Dems want us to turn over health care to the Federal government which, they argue, will do a better job than the current system. Health care incidentally is 19% of the total U.S. economy. Let's take a look at some other Federally run programs to get some idea of how it might go. Hmmm...

"Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined.

Unfunded promises made for Medicare, Social Security and federal retirement programs account for 85% of taxpayer liabilities. State and local government retirement plans account for much of the rest." www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-05-28-federal-budget_N.htm

Still think it's a good idea and they will do better with health care? I'll pass, thanks.

Amy Stein, R.N.!

She passed! The national board exam is now behind her and pending a final background check by the Maryland Board of Nursing (there isn't something from college you didn't tell us is there?) Amy will shortly be registered as an RN. Congratulations! We could not be prouder and hope you will savor the moment - it's a sweet one. Thank you, Lord! Well done Amy!

Welcome to Business Chicago-Style

I grew up in Chicago and had a good look at how a political machine (Mayor Daley) does business. PC Mag.com reports ( www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2351125,00.asp) that Google via the Obama Administration is trying to take a bite of Apple. The technical term is "crony capitalism" and expect to see more of it in the future. You play ball with the Big O and he will play ball with you - Chicago style.

Category: God Works in Strange and Mysterious Ways

I love stories like this. Every time I am tempted to put God in a box by "regularizing" how He works to bring people to Himself, He shows up in the most unlikely places. Welcome to the Kingdom brothers in Christ!

www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/sports/02xgames.html?_r=1&hp

She Flies by the Seat of Her Pants?

I just did a posting on Oregon's #3 ranking amongst un-churched states and then came across a small nugget about the states and wondered if there is a connection. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_and_territory_mottos). Do you know your state's motto? They provide fascinating insights into a state's character.

Take Kentucky, for example," United we stand, divided we fall. Deo Gratiam Haberamus. (Let us be grateful to God)." Or how about Colorado: "Nil sine numine. (Nothing without Providence)." Some are truculent like New Hampshire's "Live Free or Die." Then there is California's proud exclamation: "I have found it!" more recently amended to "Dude! I have found it!" Kidding.

Then we come to the great Pacific Northwest, the end of the Oregon Trail, home of giant Douglas Firs, majestic snow-capped mountains, the broad Columbia flowing into the gray North Pacific with its piscine bounty of salmon. And what does Oregon come up with for a state motto to reflect this pioneer spirit? "She flies with her own wings." Excuse me? What the Sam Hill does that mean? Not wanting to be topped by its southerly neighbor, Washington lets fly with "Al-ki. (By and by)." Isn't that Hawaii's motto? Is it the lack of sunshine out here or something else? No wonder folks in the NW can't appreciate the majesty of God when they respond to the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest with drivel like this! If she flies with her own wings, stay out of her way when she tries to land the darn thing!

We're #3! We're #3!

I'm back from vacation and it feels great to have been away for a week - and not so good to come back to 90+ degree temperatures. Thanks to my law partner Ray Ramsay for holding down the fort in my absence.

Well, Oregon has slipped from the #2 un-churched state to #3, behind Washington and Vermont. Vermont?!! ( www.usatoday.com/life/2002/2002-03-07-no-religion.htm) How has the West Coast let this happen??!! (OK Washington, you did your part.) I would like to think it's because Oregon's churches have been doing a better job of evangelism and winning people to Christ, but I'm not sure that is the case. Rather, it seems like Vermont has decided to let it all hang out, especially Roman Catholics who showed a sharp drop from the last survey. Wine and brie are so much nicer to discuss than sin and grace. We are so, so European! Can the Muslims be far behind?