RUTHFULLY YOURS

Monday, the Commonwealth Fund released a report claiming the U.S. has the worst health-care system in the developed world, and Great Britain has the best. But a closer look reveals serious problems with the report’s methodology: The criteria seem deliberately designed to elevate socialized health care while ignoring the strengths of the U.S. system – in particular its high survival rates. For example, a woman diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. has an 89 percent chance of surviving it, higher than anywhere in Europe.

The Commonwealth Fund’s dubious conclusion ordinarily wouldn’t deserve comment. But Commonwealth’s work is partly to blame for our current predicament, struggling with Obamacare. Earlier versions of the report issued in 2004, 2006, and 2007 bamboozled some members of Congress into believing that health care is better in countries where government calls the shots. For example, in October of 2009, Senator Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) pointed to a large blue chart during a Finance Committee meeting showing the United States in last place in health performance. “All of these countries have much lower costs than we do,” Conrad said, “and they have higher-quality outcomes than ours.”

Commonwealth gives heavy weight to “equity,” meaning equal access to care, so on this measure countries with government-run systems by definition come out on top. Another criterion gives countries points when doctors say “it’s easy to print out lists of patients by diagnosis.” And countries are rewarded when patients are “routinely sent computerized reminder notices for preventive or follow-up care”; the U.S. lost points because it is more common here to telephone patients than e-mail them. Never mind that American women have a better chance of getting regular mammograms than do women in most other countries, a reason for America’s top breast-cancer survival rate.

Justin Amash is Rated +2 by AAI, indicating pro-Arab pro-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – It is easy to confuse the incumbent with the insurgent in Michigan 3rd Congressional District race.

Brian Ellis, challenging two-term GOP incumbent Justin Amash, has picked up endorsements from three business organizations that backed Amash in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles.

The rumored revolt of the West Michigan business community against the congressman they had backed in two previous elections became fact in the ides of June.

The Michigan Farm Bureau, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and even Amash’s hometown Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce PAC came out in favor of Ellis in mid-June.

However, beyond being a wake-up call for the incumbent — and a source of new campaign financing — perhaps political endorsements are not much more than the sound and fury that should be expected from the foundations of the political establishment.

And if the politician is an anti-establishment candidate, even if that politician would seem to be a two-term member of the establishment, perhaps those endorsements can be spun in the politician’s favor.

But still, for those at the eye of this Republican hurricane, the fact that the business establishment says it has more faith in the challenger than the incumbent is news.

“Brian is a business leader who will advance solutions to grow our economy, encourage job creation, and create more opportunities for job providers in West Michigan and across the state to succeed,” said the president and chief executive officer of the Michigan Chamber, Rich Studley.

Forget the “Arab Spring” that never was. We are now in a “Jihadi Spring” that is very real. That murderous Al Qaeda spinoff the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), known locally as DAASH, has already taken control of large parts of Syria and Iraq and yesterday seized a transit point with Jordan.

But what do they really have in mind? It’s not that hard to guess. Frank Lamb, a man bizarrely sympathetic to DAASH/ISIS (a group that likes to lop off people’s heads!) and in contact with their leadership, writes at a website called muslimvillage.com [1]that their dual goal is to establish a Sunni caliphate and, naturally, “liberate” Palestine:

With respect to events surrounding its takeover of Mosul and other social media broadcast exhibitions of mass brutality, ISIS claims it was done for a purpose, the same purpose that other state and non-state actors have used over the past two decades and that is for 90% of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims (Sunni) to free themselves from the oppression of the 10% (Shia).

Several reasons were given as to why Palestinians should hold out hope for ISIS succeeding in their cause when all other Arab, Muslim, and Western claimed Resistance supporters have been abject failures and invariably end up benefiting the Zionist occupation regime terrorizing Palestine. “All countries in this region are playing the sectarian card just as they have long played the Palestinian card but the difference with ISIS is that we are serious about Palestine and they are not. Tel Aviv will fall as fast as Mosul when the time is right”, a DAASH ally explained. Another gentleman insisted, “DAASH will fight where no one else is willing.”

If I were Benjamin Netanyahu, I would take them seriously — and I imagine he does.

Debkafile [2] is not always a reliable source, but in this instance I have a suspicion they are onto something:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu posted notes Friday, June 20, to President Barack Obama, King Abdullah of Jordan and Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources in Washington and Jerusalem reveal. They dealt with the rapid advances made by Al Qaeda-related Sunni Islamist fighters in Iraq, now heading towards the Iraqi-Syrian-Jordanian border intersection and how they bore on the security of Israel, the Palestinians and Kingdom of Jordan just next door.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is bleeding members. Between 2000 and 2013, almost 765,000 members left the organization, a loss of nearly 30%. Last week the church’s leadership met in Detroit for crisis talks.

No, not about the emptying-pews crisis. The Israel-Palestinian crisis.

On Friday, in a close vote (310-303), the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)—the largest of several Presbyterian denominations in America—resolved to divest the organization’s stock in Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions. The church’s Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment said the companies have continued to “profit from their involvement in the occupation and the violation of human rights in the region,” and have even “deepened their involvement in roadblocks to a just peace.” Israel’s counterterrorism and defense measures have included razing Palestinian houses (with Caterpillar equipment), operating Gaza and West Bank checkpoints (with Hewlett-Packard technology), and utilizing military communications and surveillance (with Motorola Solutions technology).

The church signaled its antipathy for Israel earlier this year by hawking a study guide called “Zionism Unsettled” in its online church store. In the 76-page pamphlet, Zionism—the movement to establish a Jewish homeland and nation-state in the historic land of Israel—is characterized as a “a struggle for colonial and racist supremacist privilege.”

In a postscript to “Zionism Unsettled,” Naim Ateek, a Palestinian priest and member of the Anglican Church, explains the meaning of the charges in the pamphlet. “It is the equivalent of declaring Zionism heretical, a doctrine that fosters both political and theological injustice. This is the strongest condemnation that a Christian confession can make against any doctrine that promotes death rather than life.”

In one response, Katharine Henderson, president of New York’s Auburn Theological Seminary, said in February that the “premise of the document appears to be that Zionism is the cause of the entire conflict in the Middle East,” in essence “the original sin, from which flows all the suffering of the Palestinian people.” And amid intense criticism of the study guide from the Anti-Defamation League and other groups, the church’s General Assembly declared on Wednesday that ” ‘Zionism Unsettled’ does not represent the views of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).” But the assembly didn’t bar the church from continuing to distribute and sell it.

Albert Spratte, the sergeant-at-arms of the National Border Patrol Council Local 3307 in the Rio Grande Valley, says there are two types of illegal immigrants crossing the border: those whom Border Patrol catches and those who catch Border Patrol. While driving along a remote stretch of road next to the Rio Grande River south of McAllen, Texas, Spratte points at various paths and identifies which type of immigrant traffic uses each one.

Soon, a man comes out of the brush and walks toward Spratte’s nondescript green truck to surrender. The man says he’s traveled 15 days from El Salvador and is headed to California to do some remodeling work. He says he’s been to the United States before and adds that he still has the paperwork of his order to appear in court from several years ago.

Spratte calls Border Patrol to report the man’s apprehension and gives him some Gatorade and water. The man says he’s traveling alone, but Spratte isn’t buying it. He says people traveling in large groups have characterized the sharp spike in OTM border traffic — OTM meaning “other than Mexicans.” A group of nearly 300 Central Americans recently turned themselves in to American officials, he says.

“Next week 300 is going to be nothing,” Spratte says. “It’ll be 500 or 400 until they make the decision to start enforcing our immigration laws and deporting people.”

When a Border Patrol official arrives, the surrendering man voluntarily walks to the back of the vehicle and climbs in. He’s headed to a local Border Patrol station but likely won’t be there very long. Instead of being sent back home, he will probably be let go within the U.S., with an “order to appear” at a later date. If he fails to appear, he will be deported in absentia, but he almost certainly will not be pursued unless he commits another crime.

Zury Arrita, a 25-year-old Honduran woman, says she and her daughter were detained for four days before they were released at the McAllen bus station. From there she made her way to the nearby Sacred Heart Catholic Church, where volunteers provide food, clothing, medical attention, and temporary shelter.

These days, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing strong criticism from an unlikely corner. In a private meeting this past May, the leaders of several settlements accused him of stymieing the settlement enterprise. His response, that Israel had to “consider international constraints,” was not well received.

Soon after the meeting, on May 29, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics issued a report that supported the settlers’ claims. In the first quarter of 2014, the bureau reported, the Israeli government had approved only 232 residential units for construction in the area that Israelis commonly call Judea and Samaria and most people know as the West Bank. That rate is roughly half that of the last decade, which saw an average of 1,687 units built each year. And given that existing settlements currently house roughly 350,000 Israeli citizens — who have an annual birthrate of about four percent — this slower rate of construction can hardly sustain even natural population growth. The community leaders who met with Netanyahu last week know that better than anyone.

A geographic analysis of the data, moreover, suggests that the settlers have an additional reason to worry: under Netanyahu’s current government, construction outside the so-called major settlement blocs — the areas most likely to remain part of Israel in a final peace settlement — has steadily decreased. Over the past five years, the number of homes approved for construction in the smaller settlements has amounted to half of what it was during Netanyahu’s first premiership in 1996–99. Moreover, the homes the government is now approving for construction are positioned further west, mostly in the major blocs or in areas adjacent to the so-called Green Line, the de facto border separating Israel from the West Bank. The 1,500 units that Israel announced plans for earlier this month were also in the major blocs and in East Jerusalem, continuing the pattern.

Mañana is here

Much has changed, obviously, since I published Mexico: chaos on our doorstep [Hardback, Paperback: 232 pages, Madison Books (July 24, 1989), ISBN-10: 0819172960, ISBN-13: 978-0819172969, Amazon, $13.17].

. As so often has happened, my timing was bad. The book’s research identified a problem prematurely and the title raised hackles among some Latin American specialists, most of whom had a more optimistic view.

But what led me to write the book may still be as relevant. It was my “discovery” of the startling fact that the 1500-mile U.S. Mexican border was the only land frontier between what in those days was called The Third World, pre-industrial, poverty-stricken, and unstable societies,.and the First World of a few “developed” European and North American countries, Australiasia and Japan. Ultimately, I argued, that was bound to lead to a security crisis for Washington.

The prediction has been a long time in coming and we may still not be there yet – but recent events on the border suggest we are very near at least.

I couldn’t but be struck these past few days with the familiarity of “the children crisis” on the Texas border. In my reporting for the book in Mexico and in the U.S., particularly among Mexican Americans, the head of Los Angeles’ medical services told me his budget was coming apart because pregnant illegal Mexican women increasingly were using his facilities. They accomplished two purposes: they got free medical services not then available in Mexico except to the rich. But more important, they established the American birthright of their offspring who might in later years claim citizenship for their families. But his complaint was that in order to meet this additional drain on his facilities he was having to reduce his postnatal care extension service.

Substitute the nationalities of the current children and accompanying parents and pregnant women now producing “a humanitarian crisis” and you see trends haven’t changed.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/surrendering-to-isis-in-iraq-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang was guest-hosted by Josh Brewster and joined by Michael Hausam, a writer at IJReview.com, Nonie Darwish, the author of The Devil We Don’t Know, and Ernie White, a civil rights activist.

The Gang gathered to discuss, Surrendering to ISIS in Iraq?

The guests also tackled America’s Border Crisis, Hillary’s Fantasy about Hamas’ Genocidal Technocrats, Benghazi ‘Suspect’ Captured, The IRS’s “Lost” E-mails, and much, much more.

Don’t miss it!

New Yorkers would buy no tickets to a Broadway musical that celebrates those Hamas kidnappers. So why stand for this?

If you’ve been reading that the Metropolitan Opera has cancelled “The Death of Klinghoffer” you’ve been reading it wrong.

Sneaky how they made a big announcement that is only half true in order to silence complaints that the opera is partly pregnant with anti-Semitism.

Europeans eat this up.
The worldwide telecast has been scrubbed, yes, you read that correctly, but live performances of this opera that justifies hell on earth will still be performed at Lincoln Center starting in October. I checked. The irony is too much from the Met website…

Which is happy to announce that tickets are available for performances Oct. 24 and glad to note that WHEELCHAIR LOCATIONS are available for needful patrons.

That much is in compliance with State and Federal guidelines, but were they laughing when they wrote that OUCH line?

Given the circumstances it comes across as mockery.

The scandal of fiddled global warming data
The US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record

When future generations try to understand how the world got carried away around the end of the 20th century by the panic over global warming, few things will amaze them more than the part played in stoking up the scare by the fiddling of official temperature data. There was already much evidence of this seven years ago, when I was writing my history of the scare, The Real Global Warming Disaster. But now another damning example has been uncovered by Steven Goddard’s US blog Real Science, showing how shamelessly manipulated has been one of the world’s most influential climate records, the graph of US surface temperature records published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Goddard shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data “fabricated” by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on “fabricated” data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century.

When I first began examining the global-warming scare, I found nothing more puzzling than the way officially approved scientists kept on being shown to have finagled their data, as in that ludicrous “hockey stick” graph, pretending to prove that the world had suddenly become much hotter than at any time in 1,000 years. Any theory needing to rely so consistently on fudging the evidence, I concluded, must be looked on not as science at all, but as simply a rather alarming case study in the aberrations of group psychology.