RUTHFULLY YOURS

‘All we’ve been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it. . . . I’m infuriated because I was lied to,” one woman told the Los Angeles Times, as part of a story on how some middle-class Californians have been stunned to learn the real costs of Obamacare.

And that lie looks like the biggest lie about domestic policy ever uttered by a U.S. president.

The most famous presidential lies have to do with misconduct (Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” or Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations”) or war. Woodrow Wilson campaigned on the slogan “He kept us out of war” and then plunged us into a calamitous war. Franklin D. Roosevelt made a similar vow: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”

Roosevelt knew he was making false promises. He explained to an aide: “If someone attacks us, it isn’t a foreign war, is it?” When his own son questioned his honesty, FDR replied: “If I don’t say I hate war, then people are going to think I don’t hate war. . . . If I don’t say I won’t send our sons to fight on foreign battlefields, then people will think I want to send them. . . . So you play the game the way it has been played over the years, and you play to win.”

The burning question about Barack Obama is whether he was simply “playing to win” and therefore lying on purpose, or whether his statements about Obamacare were just another example of, as Obama once put it, “I actually believe my own” spin, though he used another word.

“No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people,” he told the American Medical Association in 2009. “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

No matter how you slice it, that was a lie. As many as 16 million Americans on the individual health-insurance market may lose their insurance policies. Just in the last month, hundreds of thousands have been notified by their insurers that their policies will be canceled. In fact, it appears that more Americans may have lost coverage than gotten it since Healthcare.gov went “live” (a term one must use advisedly). And when the business mandate finally kicks in, tens of millions more probably will lose their plans.

After howls of protests from both American scientists [1] and Beijing propagandists [2] screaming “discrimination,” NASA has reversed its initial decision to exclude Chinese nationals from the Kepler Science Conference at the Ames Research Center in California early next month.

The reversal came after Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA), the author of legislation restricting contacts between NASA and China, indicated the Chinese should not be barred. “The congressional provision — which has been in place since early 2011 — primarily restricts bilateral, not multilateral, meetings and activities with the Communist Chinese government or Chinese-owned companies,” he wrote [3] to NASA on the 8th of this month. “It places no restrictions on activities involving individual Chinese nationals unless those nationals are acting as official representatives of the Chinese government.”

Wolf gave NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who is broadly in favor of cooperation with Beijing, the political cover to invite the Chinese to the conference. Moreover, most analysts and observers think the ban in this case was ill-advised. As Geoff Marcy, the well-known astronomy professor at Berkeley, noted [4], “The meeting is about planets located trillions of miles away, with no national security implications.”

Is that so? “No, the PLA is not going to invade exoplanets in the Andromeda system, but the PLA is very interested in deep space,” analyst Rick Fisher, referring to the Chinese military by its initials, tells PJ Media. “Knowledge of deep space dynamics and operations is viewed by the PLA as necessary for ‘space control.’”

Marcy may know much about the heavens — he is said to be in line for a Nobel Prize, after all — but he could use a brush-up on China. “There is no such thing as a non-military related space program or non-military affected space researcher in China,” notes Fisher, a senior fellow of the International Assessment and Strategy Center and widely followed China military expert. “If the PLA wanted to use any of the insights that Chinese scientists gained from the Kepler Conference, those Chinese scientists would comply immediately.”

Check out the previous installments in this ongoing series:

#10: David Irving

#9: Roger Waters

#7: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

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The good news is that since September 28 the Greek government has been cracking down on Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi movement that won almost 7 percent of the popular vote in spring 2012 and, ending up with 18 parliamentary seats, became Greece’s third strongest party.

On September 17, an antifascist rapper named Pavlos Fissas (aka Killah P.) was stabbed to death in Athens, allegedly by a Golden Dawn activist. Earlier attacks, including at least one fatal one on an immigrant, were also ascribed to Golden Dawn.

On September 28, Greek police arrested Golden Dawn’s leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, and other top party members on charges of running a criminal organization. Michaloliakos and two other deputies are now in jail awaiting trial. Meanwhile the Greek parliament has voted to strip six more Golden Dawn MPs of their immunity.

While the Greek constitution doesn’t allow political parties to be banned, the parliament also appears set to cut Golden Dawn’s state funding.

So much for the good news.

The bad news is that, first, Golden Dawn remains popular. It was scoring as high as 14 percent in opinion polls before the rapper’s stabbing, and since then has gone back down to about 7 percent. Whether or not that’s just a temporary dip is not yet known.

And second, as long claimed and as Financial Times confirms, one of Golden Dawn’s strongholds in the country is none other than the police:

My question: ” As a proper British subject, do you hate the Jews more than is absolutely necessary????” rsk

The UK Methodists have put out a questionnaire to help them construct a briefing on the arguments for and against boycotting Israel. As the deadline looms we offer some help
Consultation Questions

The wider context around Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)

1. What do you understand to be the motivation/inspiration behind the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions in relation to Israel?

Ignorance, prejudice, and bigotry.

2. In your view, what would be the essential elements of any peace agreement in Israel/Palestine?

The Palestinians would need to end decades of rejectionism. They must finally accept the legitimacy of the Jews’ right to self-determination in their historic homeland. With that enormous obstacle out of the way, other matters can be the subject of reasonable compromise.

Boycotts

3. Do you support a boycott of products produced within Israeli settlements?

No. Do you support a boycott of products made in Northern Ireland, another disputed territory, or in Cyprus, or in…etc etc?

4. Do you support the call for a wider consumer boycott of all Israeli products?

No

THIS IS REALLY STOOPING TO A NEW LOW….WHAT MAKES THIS DEFENSE OF A KNOWN TRAITOR SO APPALLING IS THAT THE AUTHOR CASS SUNSTEIN WAS ONE OF OBAMA’S “CZARS”- ADMINISTRATOR OF THE WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF INFORMATION AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS….AND THE HUSBAND OF SAMANTHA POWER THE OBAMA APPOINTED US AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS….PRESIDENTIAL CRONIES…..RSK

Many Americans have forgotten, or never learned about, the Alger Hiss case. One of the most dramatic trials of the 20th century, it helps explain not only the rise of McCarthyism in the early 1950s and the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, but also the contemporary roles of Rush Limbaugh, Ted Cruz and the Tea Party.

The Hiss case casts light on why conservatives and liberals are suspicious of each other, on their different attitudes toward elitism, on their understandings of patriotism and on the parallel universes in which they seem to live.
In his 1948 testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Whittaker Chambers, a writer and editor for Time magazine and a former Communist, identified Hiss as a Communist. Hiss adamantly denied the charge. He said he didn’t know anyone named Whittaker Chambers. Encountering his accuser in person, Hiss spoke directly to him: “May I say for the record at this point that I would like to invite Mr. Whittaker Chambers to make those same statements out of the presence of this committee without their being privileged for suit for libel?”

Chambers took Hiss’s bait. In an interview on national television, Chambers repeated his charges. In response to the libel suit, he produced stolen State Department documents and notes that seemed to establish not merely that Hiss was a Communist, but that he had spied for the Soviet Union. Hiss was convicted of perjury.

Is it any wonder crime is on the rise?

Ms. Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal and the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. This article was adapted from the Autumn 2013 issue of City Journal.

California Gov. Jerry Brown and the federal judiciary are locked in a dramatic constitutional battle over control of the state’s prisons. In 2009, three federal judges issued what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has dubbed “perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history”: an order that California release up to 40,000 prisoners within two years to correct allegedly unconstitutional prison health care.

California has since spent more than $1 billion on new prison medical facilities, brought its correctional health care far above constitutional standards, and shed more inmates than are housed in all but a few states. Yet the judges show no sign of relinquishing their hold. California’s recent sharp increase in property crime—a rise eight times greater than the national average—may be one consequence of the judicial intervention.
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In this photo taken Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013, inmates walk through the exercise yard at California State Prison Sacramento, near Folsom, Calif. Associated Press

The prisoner-release order was the culmination of two long-running lawsuits, Coleman v. Brown and Plata v. Brown, in which an advocacy group representing California inmates, the Prison Law Office, challenged prison medical treatment. The attorneys alleged that understaffing and the incompetence of prison doctors resulted in serious misdiagnoses and long, sometimes fatal, waits for care.

In 2007, after years of litigation, a special three-judge panel was convened to consider the plaintiffs’ latest argument that overcrowding was now the primary source of remaining constitutional violations. The panel agreed, and in 2009 it ordered the state to bring the prison population, then at 150,118, down to 109,805. In May 2011, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 majority led by Justice Anthony Kennedy, affirmed the panel’s release order, marking the first time the court had put its imprimatur on a prisoner-release directive. The panel then set the population reduction deadline for the end of 2013.

In response, Gov. Brown and the Democrats in the state legislature passed what Stanford law school Prof. Joan Petersilia has called the “biggest penal experiment in modern history.” Assembly Bill 109, known as “realignment,” would lower the prison count by sentencing felony property and drug offenders to county jail instead of state prison. The bill also virtually eliminates parole supervision—a perverse but simple solution to the alleged problem of too many parolees winding up back in prison for parole violations.

The complex bill has imposed potentially disastrous burdens on county sheriffs and city police departments, but it did accelerate California’s already falling prison count. From 2007 to the start of 2013, the prison census fell 42,000, and is now—at 120,000—at the lowest level in 17 years.

In January, Gov. Brown declared that California was capable of operating its own prison system and asked the three-judge panel to lift its prisoner release order. Prison overcrowding was a thing of the past, Gov. Brown maintained. The makeshift dormitories in prison gymnasia that had played so large a role in the Supreme Court’s opinion had been eliminated and prison health care is now far above the de minimis constitutional standard, he argued. California spends $17,924 per prisoner on medical treatment—four times what the federal government spends in its prisons and three times New York’s rate. Most offenders get better medical attention in prison than they would in their own neighborhoods.

Sometimes rock ‘n’ roll can accomplish more to promote freedom than translating the Federalist Papers. (Oh Puleez!!!! I appreciate Lou Reed but this is balderdash!!!! rsk)

It is somehow fitting that rock star Lou Reed died Sunday, in this season of American national angst over government shutdowns, mounting debt and declining influence abroad. That’s because the Velvet Underground frontman not only motivated Václav Havel and the Czechoslovak dissidents who challenged their Communist rulers and helped bring down the Soviet Union. He also demonstrated why, for all we hear about Washington’s sclerosis, it is still smart to bet on America in this century as in the last.

Not that Reed himself would have put it this way. Starting in the mid-1960s, his lyrics about urban life, drugs and sexuality made him one of rock’s leading transgressives. Later he lambasted the concept of the American dream (“Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor I’ll piss on ’em/That’s what the Statue of Bigotry says”) and railed against New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the religious right. In recent years, he supported Occupy Wall Street and performed in Israel, even as some of his left-wing contemporaries boycotted the Jewish state.
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Former Czech President Vaclav Havel (R) and U.S. singer Lou Reed (L) arrive for a news conference in Prague, January 10, 2005. Reuters

But whatever his personal politics, Reed’s music took on a life of its own behind the Iron Curtain. In the 1970s Czechoslovakia’s anti-Communist movement coalesced around a Velvet Underground-inspired rock group called the Plastic People of the Universe. The Communist government branded the rockers enemies of the state for their long hair, crazy outfits, secret concerts and anti-authority lyrics.

One of President Obama’s steadfast second-term priorities is his regulatory “climate action plan.” If the point is to reduce carbon emissions, the evidence suggests he’d accomplish more counting on capitalism.

The federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported last week, to too little media fanfare, that U.S. energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions declined 3.8% in 2012, bringing C02 emissions to their lowest level since 1994. The only year since 1990 with a steeper decline was 2009 amid an economic recession. The 2012 decline occurred even as the economy grew 2.8%.

Much of the 2012 decline was due to a warm first quarter that reduced the use of heating fuels, as well as fewer transportation emissions, as Americans drove less and overall vehicle miles were flat compared to 2011.
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Associated Press

More notable is that 2012 saw the largest drop in the overall “carbon intensity” of the economy since the feds began keeping records in 1949. The EIA reports that the boom in natural-gas production “substantially reduced the carbon intensity of electricity generation in 2012.” The switch to natural gas, mainly from coal, was so substantial that the resulting CO2-emissions decreases offset what was an “overall decline” last year in renewable power generation.

The EIA report also cited such Administration policies as mandates for more fuel-efficient cars as contributing to the carbon decline. But those mandates played a token role in the overall reduction, though they have cost consumers in higher costs for vehicles.

For all of the Affordable Care Act’s technical problems, at least one part is working on schedule. The law is systematically dismantling the individual insurance market, as its architects intended from the start.

The millions of Americans who are receiving termination notices because their current coverage does not conform to Health and Human Services Department rules may not realize this is by design. Maybe they trusted President Obama’s repeated falsehood that people who liked their health plans could keep them. But Americans should understand that this month’s mass cancellation wave has been the President’s political goal since 2008. Liberals believe they must destroy the market in order to save it.
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Until this month, consumers who weren’t insured through their jobs were allowed to buy insurance that provides the best value based on their own needs. One of every 10 private policies is sold through the individual market, covering about 7% of the U.S. population under age 65.

Some states have ruined this market through regulation and price controls, and in others costs can be high. But the individual market works well for millions of people, who can choose from many plans—from Cadillac coverage to cheaper protection against catastrophic illness.

Last May, reading a British Daily Mail article about the umbrella incident, during which two U.S. Marines were ordered to hold umbrellas over the heads of President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a press conference in the White House Rose Garden, other than expressing my disgust for the degrading chore the Marines had to perform (against protocol), something else tickled my memory. At the time, I was engaged in other issues and that little gray gremlin never came out of the closet. Specifically, it was the picture of Erdogan, a policy pal of Obama’s, flapping his gums while a Rock of Gibraltar Marine stood stoically holding an umbrella over his head, which prompted the gremlin to make his presence known.

At the time, I couldn’t make the connection between Erdogan and that elusive something.

This morning, after having imbibed over the past year a number of stories of how Obama goes out of his way to emasculate the U.S. military or turn it into his personal policy enforcer (Libya, Syria, etc.), the gremlin emerged, garbed in a tall funny hat with plumes and long robes and brandishing a wicked-looking scimitar, and greeting me in Turkish – Uyan, yavaş zekâlı biri! – and in Bosnian – Probudi se, tupoglav jedan!*

Janissaries.

Who or what were the Janissaries? They were a private army of Turkish sultans recruited from prisoners of war, chiefly from the Balkans. A Harvard Center for Middle East Studies study document describes this special military arm of the Ottomans:

The Janissary Corps, yeniceri ocak or “new soldier corps,” was one of two main branches of the Ottoman armed forces, the other being the Sipahis or provincial free-born Muslim cavalrymen, organized in the fourteenth century. The Janissaries were the kapukulu, “slaves of the sultan.” The corps members were educated and trained for the Ottoman military and government service and became the private standing army of the Ottoman Sultan. The Janissaries became an efficient and formidable fighting force and the most outstanding army in Europe. Over time the Corps’ essence and behavior and the empire’s needs changed and the corps was abolished in 1826.

The Janissaries were recruited from captured Christian adolescent boys who were made to convert to Islam. They were a key element in the final capitulation of Constantinople in 1453.