RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358404577605233123916096.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Paul Ryan’s critics and the architects of ObamaCare reveal their real vision for health care: coercion.

The liberal assault on Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform has often been ugly, but that’s not to say it hasn’t been instructive. While ripping Mr. Ryan, ObamaCare’s intellectual architects have been laying out in more detail their own vision for the future of American health care. It’s a vision that all Americans should know about before they go to the polls in November.
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No one did more to sell the Affordable Care Act than Peter Orszag, the former White House budget director who claimed during 2009-2010 that as much as a third of health spending is “waste” that doesn’t improve outcomes. But now that he’s repaired to Wall Street and writes an online column, he’s deriding the idea that better incentives can reduce costs and sneering at the “health-care competition tooth fairy.”

So get a load of Mr. Orszag’s Tinker Bell alternative, which he called the “most important institutional change” after ObamaCare passed in 2010: the Independent Payment Advisory Board composed of 15 philosopher kings who will rule over U.S. health care.

Who are these Orszag 15? Well, nobody knows. The board was supposed to be up and running by the end of September, but the White House is avoiding naming names for Senate confirmation until after the election. No one knows, either, what this group of geniuses will propose, but that too is part of the grand Orszag plan.

ObamaCare included dozens of speculative pilot programs that are supposed to make health-care delivery and business models less wasteful. Mr. Orszag’s payment board is then supposed to apply the programs that “work” to all of U.S. medicine through regulation, without Congressional consent or legal appeal. Seriously.

It doesn’t take a mythical childhood metaphor to mock this theory. Mr. Orszag’s style of central planning—in what was already the heaviest regulated U.S. industry before ObamaCare—has failed over and over again in Medicare since the creation of the fiat pricing fee schedule in the 1980s.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358404577607610201699468.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Student opinion at elite schools is showing ‘diversity.’ The faculty is another matter.

“Thus, the current Guide to the First Year at Harvard alerts incoming students to orientation programs in diversity designed to build connections within and across “nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, physical ability, and religion.” Characteristically and tellingly absent from the list is political or intellectual diversity.”

Four years ago at the beginning of Harvard’s school term, I was going over an assignment with a freshman when she confessed that she was feeling guilty—because she was working for the Obama campaign. I assumed she meant that her campaign work was taking too much time from her studies, but she corrected me: She was feeling guilty because she supported John McCain.

So why, I asked, was she working for his opponent? She answered: “Because I wanted so badly to get along with my roommates and with everyone else.”

Few of us survive adolescence without some conflict of the kind experienced by this freshman and dramatized by Tom Wolfe in his novel “I Am Charlotte Simmons” (2004): the conflict between the demands of new surroundings and the moral beliefs and values one brings from home. Every environment dispenses its conventional wisdom, and swimming against the current is always hard. But our freshman’s predicament was driven by an exaggerated impression of “everyone else.”

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3309/germany-integration-turkish-muslims Integration may even be unattainable if the younger generation of Turkish-Germans increasingly continues to embrace Islam. Nearly half of all Turks living in Germany say they hope there will be more Muslims than Christians in Germany in the future, according to a new survey of Turkish-German mores and attitudes. The study also shows that […]

http://townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/2012/08/24/wake_up_gop_and_quit_ostracizing_todd_akin/print Prediction: If the GOP establishment doesn’t follow Republican Rep. Todd Akin’s example with a big, fat apology — to Akin — the whole party goes down in flames come November. I don’t mean every Republican will lose, but there is great political peril in not sealing the hole in Republican armor that has opened […]

WHAT BETTER EVIDENCE IS THERE FOR THE FAILURE OF THE LIBERAL MEDIA TO SERIOUSLY VET SOMEONE THAN THE SORDID STORY OF JOHN EDWARDS? RSK

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/315013/original-birthers-victor-davis-hanson

The Left went apoplectic over Romney’s recent joke about birth certificates — perhaps a tit-for-tat shot across Obama’s bow for the prior week’s presidential evocation of the old story of Romney’s dog on top of Romney’s car. But if pundits wish to be so angry at the birther joking, then they should go after the original birthers, who may have started the myth — the literary agency Dystel & Goderich, which for over 16 years in their promo bio listed Obama as Kenyan-born — 1991–2007 — without any apparent complaint or questioning by those who read it. That fabrication was an odd thing to do for two reasons: One, authors are customarily asked to submit biographical information to their agents and publishers, and often periodically update and edit that information in catalogues, promo material, and booklets; and, two: The Kenyan-born reference disappeared abruptly in 2007, without any explanation, right about the time that Senator Obama began his campaign for the presidency.

Many have interpreted those strange events not as a simple “slip,” but as the lame fudging of either the agents, or the author, or both, to construct a suitably exotic birthplace for Obama that might emphasize the cross-cultural themes of his autobiography — a hypothesis strengthened by revelations that a great number of the key stories of Dreams from My Father were fictionalized, bearing little semblance to what actually happened.

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2012/08/14/report-from-rome-berlusconi%E2%80%99s-comeback
Report From Rome: Berlusconi’s Comeback?
Ah, Italian politics . . . This scene reminds me of my native Serbia: corruption, sleaze, scandals, cushy jobs for the boys, and dramatis personæ that changes but little from one decade to another. There’s also the same resentment at various dictates coming from the German-dominated European Union—of which Italy (unlike Serbia) is a member, but an institution many Italians now see as a hostile foreign entity.

After nine months in power, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti is in trouble. His non-partisan government of technocrats was effectively appointed on orders from the European Commission last November to sort out the country’s messy finances, which his predecessor Silvio Berlusconi was deemed unable to do. Berlusconi did not put much of a fight—which he could have done—and in retrospect we can see why. Within weeks Monti had to introduce hugely unpopular emergency austerity measures intended to restore market confidence, which included raising taxes by over twenty billion Euros ($25bn), increasing retirement age (which for many civil servants was a cushy 59!), and introducing tough new measures to curb tax evasion, a national sport if there ever was one. The assumption in Rome was that a reciprocal package would be put together in Brussels (with a blessing from Berlin, of course) to allow new liquidity into Italian economy to encourage growth and restore market confidence.

http://times247.com/

Anti-Obama film nabs No. 1 at box office
The Blaze
Friday, August 24, 2012
News
Dinesh D’Souza’s anti-Obama documentary, “2016: Obama’s America,” began playing in 1,090 North American theaters on Friday and is opening as the No. 1 movie at the domestic box office today, Deadline reports. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz24ee7YX9f

Palin aiding ‘underdogs’ far from Florida limelight
Los Angeles Times
Saturday, August 25, 2012
News
Palin aiding ‘underdogs’ far from Florida limelight

When the Republican National Convention kicks off Monday in Tampa, the star of the 2008 GOP gathering, Sarah Palin, will be 2,000 miles away in Arizona, campaigning for congressional candidates. …

Palin will be in little Gilbert, Ariz., helping serve up barbecue Monday afternoon alongside congressional hopeful Kirk Adams and later stumping for a couple of incumbent Republican congressmen, Jeff Flake and Paul Gosar. …

Read more: http://times247.com/articles/palin-to-help-underdogs-far-from-fla-limelight#ixzz24eeptat8hopeful Kirk Adams and later stumping for a couple of incumbent Republican congressmen, Jeff Flake and Paul Gosar. …

Read more: http://times247.com/articles/palin-to-help-underdogs-far-from-fla-limelight#ixzz24eeZTGQw

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz24edLmcPI
Libya’s Islamists raze another sacred site….GEEZ I ALMOST FORGOT THEY ARE AN ARAB ‘SPRING’TIME MODEL NOW THAT QADDAFI IS GONE
Agence France-Presse
Saturday, August 25, 2012
News
Islamist hardliners bulldozed part of a revered mausoleum in Tripoli early on Saturday in the second such attack in Libya in two days. The radicals used an excavator to demolish part of the mausoleum of Al-Shaab Al-Dahman, close to the center of the Libyan capital. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz24eddgvvy

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

DAVID SINGER IS MY FRIEND AND E-PAL AND HE LISTS THE “CONSTRUCTIVE” EFFORTS OF ISRAEL TO SHOW GOOD WILL. ALAS, DEAR DAVID, THE ONLY CONSTRUCTIVE GESTURE THE PALARABS WILL ACCEPT IS THE “JONESTOWN SOLUTION.” (IN GUYANA ON NOVEMBER 18,1978 A MASS SUICIDE TOOK PLACE )…..RSK

Via the antipodean J-Wire service as usual comes this latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer. It’s entitled “Palestine – Where To From Here?”.

‘Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has written to Her Excellency Baroness Ashton, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security, “to demonstrate Israel’s goodwill, desire to build trust and sincere desire to create a positive atmosphere vis-á-vis the PA, with the goal of bringing our neighbors back to the table of direct negotiations”.

The PA has refused to resume direct negotiations until Israel agrees to impose a construction freeze in the West Bank for the duration of such resumed negotiations – which Israel refuses to do.

Mr Lieberman has listed the following “significant gestures” made by Israel to attract the PA to drop its demand for a freeze and return to the negotiating table – which he claims are “not properly represented or reflected in the policy of the European Union or the Quartet on this subject”.

Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Shteinitz and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad concluded (July 31) arrangements with respect to the transfer of goods between Israel and the PA and related tax procedures as recommended by the International Monetary Fund;

In light of the PA‘s budget crisis, Israel transferred at the beginning of the month of Ramadan (July 27) an advance of NIS 180 million (approximately USD 45 million) of August tax remittances. The money was intended to help the PA pay salaries in time to celebrate the holiday;

An agreement was concluded (July 14) to employ an additional 5,000 Palestinian construction workers in Israel;

The number of roadblocks was reduced to 10, most of which are normally open;

The remains of Palestinian terrorists were returned (May 31);

Israel agreed to develop the gas field off the Gaza shoreline;

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1565/exclusive_bbc_spends_a_third_of_1_million_concealing_middle_east_balen_report_?print=true
A Freedom of Information request released by The Commentator shows how desperate the BBC is to hide the Balen Report

Today, The Commentator reveals a Freedom of Information request showing that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has so far spent almost a third of a million pounds (more than half a million dollars) in order to conceal the infamous ‘Balen Report’, into the corporation’s coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, from the British public.

Britons are required by law to own licences in order to use televisions. This raises £3.6billion in funding for the state broadcaster. Despite this public funding, the BBC does not have to comply with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 with regard to actual information held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature.

The Balen Report was written in 2004 and campaigners say the BBC does not wish to release the document over fears that it will substantiate claims of BBC bias against Israel. Ironically, it is understood that former Director of News for the BBC, Richard Sambrook, commissioned the report in order to allay public fears. The report, however, was never released.

Since 2004, campaigners have attempted to coax the BBC into releasing the report, taking the organisation through a series of legal battles in order to view the information held within.

It has now come to light that the BBC has spent almost a third of a million pounds to hide the report from the public eye: “The legal costs incurred by the BBC amount to £332,780.47,” the BBC said.

The actual cost to the BBC is likely to be far higher, as in-house legal time is not factored in and nor is Value Added Tax.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/08/army_report_buried_islamic_motivations_for_afghan_murders_of_us_troops.html

On May 12, 2011 a US Army “Red Team” issued an unclassified report which purported to explain the burgeoning rash of murderous attacks (which have since escalated even further, still) by Afghan National Army (ANA) members on US and other NATO troops.

Although the report is dominated by apologetic, cultural relativist drivel which attempts, in vain, to explain away these acts of murder committed against the US and NATO troops by their by ANA “allies,” it also includes a crudely buried, sub rosa truthful narrative.

This latter discussion is all that matters, and bears full, clear exposure — particularly in light of the morally dubious excuse for the most recent spate of such killings of US troops. Specifically, General Allen in a pronouncement for which he should be forced to resign, maintained that Ramadan fasting, combined with operational tempo during the summer heat, were the drivers of these most recent killings of his own troops by Muslim ANA soldiers.

What General Allen willfully ignores was laid out, albeit clumsily camouflaged, using plain language, fifteen months ago in the “Red Team” report.

Based upon extensive interviews, US and NATO troops, as the report notes, were both disgusted with, and highly (and justifiably) suspicious of, the Islamically-sanctioned practices and behaviors of their Afghan military allies, and Afghan civilians.