RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://americanthinker.com/assets/3rd_party/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/the_october_surprise_that_could_cripple_the_practice_of_medicine.htm
You won’t read about the International Classification of Disease (ICD) on TMZ or hear it discussed on The View, but it has the potential to be an unpleasant October surprise in the health care world. It is a list of codes that physicians and hospitals use when billing insurance companies. These codes cover all manner of medical diagnoses for diseases, conditions, and injuries.

The first version of the ICD appeared in 1946, with periodic revisions since. Six months from now, on October 1, the latest version, the ICD-10, will be implemented in the U.S. We are late to the party, with other countries having implemented this over the past 15 years. The ICD-10 has already been delayed for a year, but the administration promises no further delays.

The ICD-10 is not the fault of ObamaCare, nor is it Bush’s fault. The classification preceded even Bill Clinton. So this is not a partisan issue. Instead, it is an issue of complexity, arriving in the wake of the largest health care overhaul in history, with its attendant chaos and confusion.

The current version, the ICD-9, uses a 4- or 5-digit number to code for a particular disease, such as 540.9 for appendicitis. The ICD-10 will have up to 7 alphanumeric characters to specify a condition, such as S52.521A for “torus fracture of lower end of right radius, initial encounter for closed fracture.” And there are now over five times as many codes for doctors and hospitals to choose from.

http://americanthinker.com/assets/3rd_party/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/03/harry_reid_used_campaign_funds_to_give_granddaughter_17000.html

In a repeat of the same crime that sent Jesse Jackson Jr to prison, Harry Reid’s campaign used $17,000 of campaign funds as a gift to his granddaughter, and covered it up in a mandatory disclosure document by omitting her last name (Reid). Karoun Demirjian of the Las Vegas Sun reports:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has reimbursed his campaign nearly $17,000 paid to his granddaughter for “holiday gifts” in late 2013, after the Federal Election Commission insisted that his campaign clarify why the money was spent.

The FEC sent the treasurer for Friends of Harry Reid a letter insisting that he “must include a brief statement or description … to clarify the following description: ‘holiday gifts.’”

Reid’s campaign operation listed that description on its year-end report for two separate disbursements to Ryan Elisabeth of Berkley, Calif., on Oct. 23 — one for $5,416.93, the other for $11,370.00.

“Ryan Elisabeth” is actually Ryan Elisabeth Reid, the majority leader’s granddaughter, a spokeswoman for Reid confirmed Tuesday.

“I thought it would be nice to give supporters and staff thank-you gifts that had a personal connection and a Searchlight connection,” Reid said in a prepared statement. “But I have decided to reimburse the campaign for the amount of the expenditure.”

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/03/27/obama-meets-pope-francis-gives-him-a-box-of-seeds/

President Obama met Pope Francis this morning at the Vatican in a meeting that lasted a little under an hour and featured Obama giving the pontiff a box of seeds.

Obama brought along Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, press secretary Jay Carney and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes.

The pope greeted Obama outside the Papal Library with a friendly handshake. Obama “nodded his head slightly,” according to the White House pool report. “Wonderful meeting you,” the president said. “Thank you sir, thank you.”

“It is a great honor. I’m a great admirer. Thank you so much for receiving me,” Obama continued. “I bring greetings from my family. The last time I came here to meet your predecessor I was able to bring my wife and children.”

Michelle Obama departed China yesterday after a weeklong trip with her daughters and mother.

The pool reporters could not hear the pope’s responses to Obama as they sat across a desk from each other, each with an interpreter. Pope Francis’s native language is Spanish but he also speaks Italian, Portuguese, French, German, Ukrainian, Piedmontese and Latin, according to the Vatican.

Article printed from The Rosett Report: http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett

On Thursday the United Nations General Assembly weighed in on Russia’s seizure of Crimea, inspiring headlines to the effect that Russia is becoming a pariah at the UN. For instance, the New York Times reported: “Vote by U.N. General Assembly Isolates Russia.” [1]

If only it were that straightforward. But if you look at the actual resolution, and the vote, it’s more like the UN General Assembly has sort-of-maybe-somewhat semi-isolated Russia. The point being that, unfortunately, the UN is no place to go for any solution to Russia’s territorial grabs.

The UN body that should really be objecting to Russia’s seizure of Ukraine is the UN Security Council. But with Russia holding one of the Permanent Five veto-wielding seats, the Security Council is even more impotent than usual. So Ukraine had to take its case to the General Assembly, where the resolutions can carry a certain heft as a reflection of general opinion, but have no binding force.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14751#.UzVPdYWCUtV

Those of us in America who stay awake nights worrying about Israel sometimes imagine that the rest of the country is similarly obsessed. This is a serious mistake. America has other business. Even worse is when Israel makes foolish and tragic concessions in order to “make America happy.” But America is happy enough watching “Dancing with the Stars.”

Back when I was editor for KYW all-news radio (a million listeners during my Morning Drive shift) I ran Israel as the top story day after day. I gave people what I thought they wanted. Turned out, from a scientific survey, that people wanted weather and traffic. News about the rest of the country was a distant third and news about the rest of the world was down at the bottom at about zero.

The other day I asked some people I know what they thought of Bibi. “Bibi who?” was the consensus.

“Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” I said.

“Oh,” said one wise man. “He’s the prime minister of Iran, right?”

Make no mistake. Americans are not stupid. They just don’t care. If it’s not happening here, it’s not happening anywhere.

America’s heartbeat is in its ballparks.

The most recent Gevalt moment was when Bibi was dragged to Washington kicking and screaming. We worried. What is he going to give up today? How much territory will Israel lose and how many more murderers will be released? Israeli prime ministers, according to ritual, are invited to the White House once a year to get themselves slapped around.

http://sarahhonig.com/2014/03/28/another-tack-some-are-more-equal/

Speaking the truth can be a dangerous undertaking. It can expose the speaker to all sort of chastisement. This isn’t only so in any given country’s domestic affairs but very much so in relations between states.

Ours, after all, is a globalized reality. This fact can induce and intensify inordinate hubris in some leaders with pretensions to hold sway over more than their own specified domain. White House occupant and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barak Obama, for instance, often conducts himself as if the American electorate and the Nobel committee had put him in charge of the whole earth.

Had Obama been an unqualified success, his conceit may be suffered but his isn’t and he doesn’t like to hear that he isn’t.

Despite his resplendent liberal credentials, Obama’s concept of liberty is a tad constricted. Everyone – everywhere on the face of this planet and beyond – is perfectly free to go into raptures over him but it’s a whole different opera when not-so-flattering opinions are sounded.

Obama, his appointed sidekicks and salaried mouthpieces resent criticism. Plain and simple.

Quite clearly, the US president and secretary of state don’t subscribe to George Orwell’s ever-relevant observation that “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

*Therefore, woe to the Quixotic sorts – both on America’s home turf and abroad – who insist on telling Obama and crew precisely what they’re loath to hear. Woe all the more to the recidivists who persist in upsetting the Obama administration’s omniscient ones.

Very obviously Israel’s defense minister Moshe Ya’alon is among the least stomached recidivists, even if he speaks his mind at closed meetings or in private conversations.

Ya’alon must come to grips with the fact that freedom of speech isn’t universally countenanced in our Obamaesque existence. Someone can be counted upon to leak or record uncomplimentary evaluations of the dear leader and then woe to him who dared tell it like he sees it.

The only way to avoid Obama’s self-righteous censure is to obsequiously shut up. Not to do so is imprudent in the extreme.

Nonetheless, Ya’alon keeps breaching the gag order that has been imposed on Israeli statesmen by Obama’s eminently ultra-liberal administration. Its honchos detest unfavorable analyses, which amounts to not wanting them voiced – not even behind closed doors.

Actually it’s not merely what is said but who says it. Restrictions on free speech especially apply to notable absentees from Obama’s list of favorites. Ya’alon most certainly is not featured on that list but a host of Iranian ayatollahs who harbor no inhibitions to stridently denounce America as the “Big Satan” are among the favorites who must never be called to order, no matter what.

Ramallah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas (now in his tenth year of office as “president,” despite having supposedly been elected in 2005 to only a four-year term) can also rant as he pleases. No amount of mind-blowing mendacity, outright incitement, rampant terror-glorification, extraordinary distortion or in-your-face extortion will ever land this perpetual favorite in hot water.

Yet whatever bespectacled soft-spoken Ya’alon says is guaranteed to get him into scalding disfavor, even if he dares talk in camera. He presumably should curb his tongue even in the privacy of his bedroom, as is advisable for anyone of whom the White House so indignantly disapproves.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/27/mandel-a-fatal-flaw-in-the-palestinian-peace-proce/?page=all#pagebreak

Palestinian recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state has assumed center stage in recent days. The Palestinians have repeatedly refused, insisting that their official recognition of Israel without reference to the Jewish character of the state is sufficient.

Although the Obama administration is aggressively pursuing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has thrown it not even a bone: In Washington on March 20, he told President Obama to his face that the Palestinians will not accept Israel as a Jewish state. The Arab League echoed that rejection this week.

Mr. Abbas also told Mr. Obama that there could be no compromise on what Palestinians call the “right of return” — the repatriation to Israel, rather than to a Palestinian state, of the Palestinian refugees of the 1948-49 war and their millions of descendants. He also repudiated the idea that a signed peace settlement with Israel would mark an end to further claims and conflict.

This result was only to be expected. American pressure on the Palestinian Authority has never been tried, even though the Obama administration was thought to be in accord with Israel on the necessity of such recognition and seeking Palestinian agreement behind the scenes. It turned out recently that this, too, is absent.

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2794/The-War-on-Wilders-Part-1.aspx

Behold the statue of The Dockworker in Amsterdam (found here via here). It stands between the Portugese Synagogue and the Jewish Historical Museum on Jonas Daniel Meijerplein Square.

Of course, all eyes are drawn to the black flag of Al Qaeda, that elongated and Arabian-curled swaztika, waving beside it.

Back to the statue for a history lesson that makes the appalling symbolism apparent. Below is a screenshot from A Travel Guide to Jewish Europe. It tells us that nearly three-quarters of a century ago, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Dutch dockworkers went on strike to protest the Nazi seizure of 400 young Dutch Jews for deportation and all but certain death. The dockworkers’ strike, the guidebook tells us, was “brutally put down by the Germans.” The statue commemorates this Dutch protest of yore to save Jewish citizens from the genocially anti-Semitic and supremacist Nazis.

Pause a moment to consider the Islamic ex-Mufti’s alliance during World War Ii with Nazi Germany. Such anti-Semitism and supremacism is mirrored in centuries of canonical Islam, which is exemplified in its most violent form in that black flag of jihad.

Think about the popularity of Mein Kampf in Islamic countries today, and Hitler, too. Consider also the Islamic anti-Semitism that undergirds the Iranian drive for nuclear weapons, the Iranian drive to destroy Israel. The black flag of jihad, an abomination anywhere, could hardly be more offensive than here in this Dutch square.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-shouldnt-expect-a-warm-reception-in-riyadh/article/2546340#

President Obama has spent this week bingeing on diplomacy but he cannot be drunk on success. There’s very little to show for his days in Europe other than a few joint statements that were forgotten as soon as the press releases were handed out.

Friday will be different and not because it will deliver a diplomatic triumph. President Obama will meet with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz at a moment when the relationship between the two nations is worse than it has been since the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Going into the meeting, Obama is at a considerable disadvantage that results directly from his own policies. The Saudis look around the Middle East and what they see scares them.
Since about February 2013, the Saudis have been giving billions of dollars and tons of arms to the rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar Assad. They believe the heavy Iranian and Russian support for Assad’s survival (in equal or greater amounts of money and arms as well as jihadist fighters and Iranian troops) to be the creation of a Shiite Iranian puppet less than a hundred miles from their northern border. Late last August, Obama said that he had decided to take military action against Syria because of Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians. When Obama abruptly decided that he would ask Congress for permission to make the strike, and then failed to pursue congressional action, the Saudis felt betrayed.

In October, after having campaigned for it, the Saudis rejected a seat on the United Nations Security Council because it hadn’t brought the Syrian civil war to an end. Only days after the rejection, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi intelligence chief, said “This was a message for the U.S., not the U.N.” Bandar said that he planned to scale back diplomatic cooperation with the U.S. and for his country to have a foreign policy independent of America’s. That is exactly what the Saudis have done

http://www.clarionproject.org/print/news/saudi-king-holds-daughters-prisoners-13-years

Princesses’ mother, who fled to London after the couple’s divorce, breaks silence

Princesses’ mother, who fled to London after the couple’s divorce, breaks silence
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/saudi-king-holds-daughters-prisoners-for-13-years/#Pu6BgoUTxz40U4CW.99

(ClarionProject) King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has kept four of his daughters locked in a royal compound in Jeddah for the last 13 years. Their mother, his second wife who fled to London after the couple’s divorce, broke the silence and told Britain’s Channel Four about their plight. She has not seen her children for 10 years.

Princess Alanoud Al Fayez married then Prince Abdullah in an arranged marriage when she as just 15. She bore him four daughters: Sahar, Maha, Hala and Jawaher.

The four have been kept in a compound in the eastern port city of Jeddah, which they cannot leave without armed guards. Their passports have been taken away, and they are barred from leaving the country. Their villa is dilapidated and falling apart, far from the living quarters of the princesses’ privileged childhood.