RUTHFULLY YOURS

When you are dealing with an administration whose officials look you in the eye and tell you the Muslim Brotherhood is a “largely secular” organization, it’s tempting to laugh off the idiocy spouted by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry about how the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam. We should resist the temptation, though, because there is a dangerous purpose behind the laughable assertion.

Obviously, Bing West and Daniel Pipes are correct that the terrorist group is entirely Islamic. As I’ve been arguing here more times and for more years than I care to remember, what we presume to call “radical Islam” (a/k/a Islamic supremacism, Islamic extremism, political Islam, Islamism, and whatever other “Islam [fill in the caveat]” terms we devise to avoid considering whether Islam itself inevitably breeds terrorism) is not very radical among the world’s Muslims. There are pacific constructions of Islam, too, but it is silly not to acknowledge that Islamic supremacism is a mainstream interpretation of Islam. It is firmly rooted in Islamic scripture and endorsed by many of Islam’s most influential scholars. Indeed, when you read what the scriptures say, there is a good argument that the pacific constructions are the ones that are radical revisionism.

This point has been made so many times it should hardly be necessary to point out that Obama and Kerry, like Kerry’s predecessor Hillary Clinton, and like many Bush-administration officials before them (including President Bush), are dead wrong when they deny the nexus between Islamic doctrine –– the literal scriptures –- and terrorism, decapitations, totalitarian government, repression of women, rabid anti-Semitism, the murder of homosexuals, and so on. Still, it would be a serious error merely to observe that they are wrong, snicker at their fecklessness, and move on.

There is a reason they are taking a position diametrically opposed to reality.

The president would like to think the Islamic State isn’t Islamic, and that we aren’t at war with it either.

Dear Reader (Including the millions of poor souls staring at their TV like a big dog whose food bowl has been moved, disappointedly expecting me to be on today’s installment of Outnumbered),

People ask me all the time, “Isn’t it awfully early to be drinking straight gin like that?”

I’m kidding. Only British hookers and Martin Landau in Rounders drink warm gin straight.

But they do ask me, “Hey, when’s your next book?”

I’m often tempted to make my first response, “Did you buy my last book? Because if you didn’t, who the #$%^ are you to nag me to write another one? It’s because of people like you I can’t have nice things.”

But right before I start looking for places I could non-fatally jam a ballpoint pen into their upper torso, I realize this is uncharitable. The problem, you see, is that people who don’t write books don’t know what an unending, unyielding ass-ache they are. I’d compare them to a non-stop flight in a middle seat between John Goodman’s sweaty former body double who’s now jobless because he “let himself go” and a runny-nosed, cotton-candy-loving small child who is hard to distinguish from a deadly pathogen vector.

But I can’t make that comparison — because writing a book is worse than that. You see there’s nothing “non-stop” about writing a book save the constant yearning to either reach the destination or the unending sound of the siren on your shoulder counseling you to give up and beach the ship. Even though you’re often surrounded by people, you’re always alone in that community-of-one called “the author of your unfinished book.”

For the Left, the Ray Rice episode is an opportunity to “reprogram the way we raise men.”

If conservatives want to know why we are losing the culture and the country, it is important to understand that while very few kids and young adults are watching Fox News (or news programs of any kind, for that matter), they inhale sports programming. It’s ubiquitous — television, radio, the Internet. And thus equally unavoidable is sports commentary, more and more of which has less and less to do with sports. Tendentious “sports journalists,” the majority of whom are decidedly left of center, are much less guarded about their hostility to conservatives than their fellow progressives on the political beat. It is a hostility that takes for granted the chummy agreement of its viewers and is designed to make Millennials want to be part of the fun.

This week, the big national news is a sports story. It involves Ray Rice. The star running-back was cut by the Baltimore Ravens after video surfaced showing him punching his now-wife’s lights out in an Atlantic City casino elevator. The National Football League and its commissioner, Roger Goodell, are in the hot seat because, some allege, the NFL had the video before suspending Rice for a measly two games. Logically, the video shouldn’t matter: The commissioner clearly knew Rice had knocked Janay Palmer out cold before issuing the trifling suspension. But graphic video has a way of overrunning logic.

My purpose here is less to wade into the Rice mess than to consider how radical ideas — like the Left’s war on boys — get mainstreamed.

Let’s say the New York Times published, or CNN aired, a fawning news story about tribal politics and Alinsky-style community organizing — how the Left uses (and often manufactures) crises to shake down big corporations, the payoffs from which pour into the coffers of “grass-roots community groups” (i.e., left-wing grievance activists such as ACORN and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network), underwriting their promotion of the “social justice” agenda in schools and the media. Big deal, right? Such stories are standard mainstream-media fare, and very few impressionable young people see them.

But what if the news story was not ostensibly political? And what if it was not published in news media but in entertainment programming — say, a hip sports show, slipped into the mix between the top plays of last night’s ballgames?

It’s 9/11 the 13th, and these United States have never been closer to losing the last vestiges of their foundational identity.

Long ago, our first president, George Washington, prophetically warned against “attachments and entanglements in foreign affairs.” In the last century, such sentiments, tragically (as I increasingly believe), fell into disrepute. In our time, Washington’s 21st-century successors, George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama, have no such compunction. On the contrary, their response to the Islamic assault of 9/11 and the aftermath of continuing jihad have been to link the fortunes of this great nation with those of warring tribes and factions in the Islamic world. That’s about as attached and entangled in foreign affairs as it is possible to get.

For the past 13 years, it has been the flawed crux of U.S. foreign policy to micromanage “moderates” in the Islamic world by waging “counterinsurgencies” as a means of defusing the “extremism” of Islam. This failed effort has had the disastrous effect of calibrating America’s fate – as well as exhausting our military and emptying our treasury – according to the rise and fall of Islamic strongmen and blocs.

It gets worse. Now, President Obama plans to fight against ISIS in Iraq and to support ISIS-allied forces in Syria. This makes no American sense. Repel ISIS (or al-Qaida, or Hezbollah, etc.) at our borders, but don’t pretend there is an American “side” in Iraq or Syria. The United States’ fate is not Iraq’s fate, not Syria’s fate, not Afghanistan’s fate. Entangled, however, we have grown used to thinking in such terms. Maliki is causing gridlock in Iraq? An American problem. Abdullah is threatening to bug out of elections in Afghanistan? An American problem.

Why? Who cares? Cut the apron strings and the funding streams and learn from our leaders’ mistakes. Acknowledge publicly that “moderates” in the Islamic world are as common and/or as reliable as unicorns, and “extremism” is the basis of Islam, and formulate new policy.

Remember “Islam is peace”? That was George W. Bush reaching out to the Islamic world right after 9/11 rather than sitting back and building a good, high and high-tech border fence to the north and south. It was also Bush, as some people (Fox News, for example) seem to forget, who presided over the redaction of the 9/11 Commission Report, and the stripping away of the language of Islam from government communications, making it impossible for officials to have a sensible discussion about Saudi Arabia or Islam ever since.

Marilinda Garcia (R) Challenger To Incumbent Ann McLane Kuster (D) in District 2
http://www.marilindagarcia.com/

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

HEALTHCARE “I will work to dismantle Obamacare and replace it with bottom-up reforms that allow consumers and their doctors to make decisions for themselves.”

Obamacare was a misguided and destructive policy from the start. Since the law was proposed in 2009, I have argued that putting health care decision-making in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats would lead to higher prices, fewer choices, no improvement in health outcomes and restricted access in the doctor-patient relationship. Now, unfortunately but as expected, we are beginning to see the evidence. Thousands of New Hampshire families have had their insurance canceled because of this new law, and thousands more who are being pushed onto the exchanges are seeing significant and unaffordable premium increases. Additionally, this broad government mandate overtakes 1/6th of the US economy and severely inhibits innovation in medicine through higher taxes, limiting and cumbersome regulations and centralization of power. In my hometown alone, I have seen highly-specialized clinics that feature state of the art equipment and medical innovation be sold by what will be the few large nationwide providers – ending the delivery of patient-centered care and transparent pricing in our community and state. But it is not enough to just oppose Obamacare. While ObamaCare has made the system worse for millions of Americans due to policy cancellations and skyrocketing premium increases, the pre-Obamacare health care system was riddled with flaws and failures. Next generation conservative leadership means providing alternatives that enhance health care options for all New Hampshire families. Instead of top-down solutions, in which politicians, bureaucrats and insurance executives are in charge of our decision-making, we should promote bottom-up solutions in which consumers make decisions for themselves. Here are some specific ideas I support:

Tax fairness: Individuals who buy insurance for themselves should be afforded the same tax exclusions that employers get when they provide insurance for their employees.
Interstate competition: Allow consumers to purchase health plans across state lines.
End lawsuit abuse: Defensive medicine, whereby doctors prescribe unnecessary treatments in order to prevent lawsuits, is contributing greatly to health care costs.

FOREIGN POLICY America has no greater ally in the Middle East than Israel. Unlike any other nation in the region, with Israel we share a commitment to individual rights, religious tolerance and representative democracy. That is why we must emphasize our commitment to Israel as we continue to face common threats, such as a nuclear-ambitious Iran and global terrorism. America must stand with her friends and allies globally. The Obama Administration has proven itself to be an unreliable partner for our allies. We should never pursue policies that alienate our greatest allies in unstable regions for the purpose of placating the demands of nations that publicly seek to harm us.

ENERGY Energy Policies That Work “I will prioritize smart domestic energy development that reduces energy prices, increases our national security and independence, and creates more job opportunities.” New Hampshire families and small businesses are feeling the pinch of high energy costs. It doesn’t have to be this way. My top priority is opposing any new energy taxes, such as the Cap-and-Trade tax or the plethora of new taxes and regulatory burdens associated with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). I oppose the cap-and-trade energy tax. Second, we can positively impact energy prices by pursuing a smart energy policy. I support policies that would increase domestic energy exploration and production, increase our refinement capacity and build more efficient energy transport systems, such as the long-overdue Keystone XL Pipeline. These policies would reduce the cost of energy, reduce our dependency on foreign oil and create new, good-paying American manufacturing jobs.

Anyone who thinks jihadism is authentically Muslim won’t change his mind because Obama says so.

“Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state.”

—​ President Barack Obama in his address to the nation on Wednesday

About the second point reasonable people can quibble. The terrorist army that calls itself the Islamic State is certainly trying to build a state — and not just a state but a super state, or caliphate. They’re not there yet; their delivery of social services seems spotty at best, though they do collect taxes and uphold the law (in a fashion).

More relevant, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a state. Morally, this weed stinks just as much whether you call it a state or a soccer league that rapes, tortures, and murders people on the side. And legally, statehood would matter — and not very much — only if the U.N. and other bodies agreed to recognize the fledgling caliphate’s legitimacy. That’s not going to happen even if the Islamic State opens up post offices and DMVs on every corner.

The president’s first assertion is trickier. Is the Islamic State “not Islamic”? Moreover, is it really “clear” that it’s not Islamic?

Not even a little? Is it Islamic-ish?

If we’re talking clarity, I’d say the Islamic State is clearly not Mormon. Or Lutheran. Or Buddhist. It most certainly is not the most extreme example of Quakers gone bad ever recorded.

As for its not being Islamic, that’s at best unclear, if not just clearly wrong. And the fact that the majority of its victims are Muslim is irrelevant. Lenin and Stalin killed thousands of Communists and socialists; that doesn’t mean Lenin and Stalin weren’t Communists and socialists. If such terrorists who kill Muslims aren’t Muslims, why do we give them Korans when we imprison them?

He likes the idea but skips major questions about what comes after.

Support for the Common Core is collapsing. Just a year ago, Gallup reported that 62 percent of Americans had never heard of the Common Core. The minority who had heard of it were generally supportive. This August, Gallup reported that 60 percent of Americans now oppose the Common Core, including 76 percent among Republicans and 60 percent of independents.

In response, Common Core advocates are redoubling their efforts to find credible Republicans to embrace the Common Core. On Thursday they got former secretary of education Bill Bennett to restate his support for the Common Core in a Wall Street Journal editorial. You can just picture the Common Core’s (predominantly liberal) champions high-fiving in celebration. But they should restrain themselves, because the Bennett column illustrates why the Common Core’s “conservative problem” isn’t going away anytime soon.

Bennett’s thinking is always sharp and deserves careful attention. In this case, such attention highlights just how tepid his endorsement turns out to be. Bennett’s big “defense” of the Common Core mostly argues that conservatives should favor rigorous academic standards, mastery of mathematics, and common assessments. (He also rebuffs the wrongheaded claim that the Common Core includes a leftist reading list and argues that Obama-administration involvement isn’t cause enough to abandon the enterprise.)

But Bennett never even attempts to make the case that the Common Core standards are “good,” or to alleviate concerns about potentially problematic consequences. In this, his column is pretty typical of what passes for conservative advocacy. Conservative champions tend to argue that high standards and common tests are good and that, ipso facto, the Common Core must be good.

Just for the record…,.Rep. McCaul gets a very negative rating from the Arab American institute:

•Rated -3 by AAI, indicating anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)
The threat from terrorists holding U.S. passports is rising, and the administration is still playing catch-up.

We heard Wednesday night from President Obama about his plan to combat the Islamic State abroad, but what we didn’t hear is his plan to combat violent Islamist extremism in the U.S.

Americans have been radicalized within our borders and drawn to this conflict in disturbing numbers. Late last month the State Department confirmed that an American was killed in Syria while fighting for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and the government is investigating a second American fatality in the same battle. Both were young men raised in Minnesota, and one was found with his U.S. passport.

Though citizens of at least 50 countries have joined the brutal terrorist group, the hundred or more Americans who have traveled to the region to join the fight are the ones who pose an exceptionally grave threat to national security. Armed with military training, combat experience and extremist connections, these battle-hardened Islamists are only a one-way flight from home.

U.S. authorities are working to track these individuals and prevent their return to America, and the international community is waking up to the need to roll back the ISIS sanctuary straddling Iraq and Syria. But the danger to the homeland cannot be eliminated or reduced to what President Obama called a “manageable problem” solely on a foreign battlefield. We must also wage a robust effort here at home to combat the violent Islamist ideology—the root of radicalization—by working with local communities to intervene when we see signs of it.

Several of our allies have recently announced new measures to tackle homegrown extremism. The United Kingdom, for example, is requiring suspected British jihadists to attend de-radicalization programs. But many of our partners ultimately look to the U.S. for guidance. So what is America doing to combat the rising threat of domestic radicalization? I am worried that we are not doing enough.

This problem with medical care started long before Hillarycare or Obamacare….Alas…the entire problem really began with the Presidency of Ronald Reagan when Medicare was empowered to set the bar for reimbursement even by private insurers, and that gave decision making to actuaries and bureaucrats who decided on lowered fees and inundated doctors with paperwork…..rsk

Endlessly entering data or calling for permission to prescribe or trying to avoid Medicare penalties—when should I see patients?
It has been four years since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, so I thought it may be useful to provide the perspective of a physician providing daily medical care. I am an endocrinologist in Washington, D.C., and have been in solo private practice for 17 years after seven years at an academic institution. Since 1990, the practice of medicine has changed significantly, seldom for the better.

In the 1990s insurance companies developed managed-care plans that greatly increased their profits at the expense of the physician. With the Affordable Care Act, we are seeing new groups profiting from changes to the health-care system. Entrepreneurs and hospital executives are capitalizing on organizing physicians into groups called Accountable Care Organizations from which they will take a very substantial percentage of collected income. Now that physicians are being required to use electronic medical records, the companies that develop them are harvesting money from physicians’ practices and from hospitals.

The push to use electronic medical records has had more than financial costs. Although it is convenient to have patient records accessible on the Internet, the data processing involved has been extremely time consuming—a sentiment echoed by most of my colleagues. To save time, I was advised by a consultant to enter data into the electronic record during the office visit. When I tried this I found that typing in the data was disruptive to the patient visit. My eyes were focused on the keyboard and the lack of direct contact kept patients from opening up and discussing their medical and personal problems. I soon returned to my old method of dictating notes and pasting a print-out of the dictation into the electronic record.

Hillary Clinton Faces Skeptical Iowa Voters by Peter Nicholas
Ahead of Possible 2016 Run, Former Secretary of State to Make Her First Visit to the State Since 2008

DES MOINES, Iowa—It was Iowa that punctured Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency in 2008. If she runs again, it looks like she still has work to do.

Some Democrats who backed other candidates in the state’s caucuses in 2008 say they haven’t yet warmed to Mrs. Clinton. Others bristled at her recent criticism of President Barack Obama’s Mideast policy. Accustomed to watching presidential candidates up close, some say they want to see a more accessible and authentic candidate than the one who finished third behind Mr. Obama and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

Mrs. Clinton remains the favorite to win her party’s nomination, should she run in 2016, and a super PAC is already making a substantial effort to help her here and in other states. She will have a chance to make new impressions when she returns to Iowa Sunday for the first time in six years to headline, along with former President Bill Clinton, a Democratic fundraiser and speak at an annual steak fry hosted by retiring Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin.

Mrs. Clinton’s public image has taken a hit since she left her job as secretary of state. Some 43% of registered voters viewed her positively in a national Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken early this month, down from 59% when she entered the State Department in 2009.

Dale Todd, a former Cedar Rapids city councilman who backed Mr. Obama in 2008, said he didn’t take well to Mrs. Clinton’s criticism in a magazine interview of the president’s delay in arming rebels in Syria and her suggestion that Mr. Obama needed a stronger organizing principle for foreign policy. “If there is some political consultant who thinks that’s the way to win Iowa, I would suggest they are incredibly wrong,” he said.

But Bret Nilles, chairman of the Linn County Democratic Party and backer of Mrs. Clinton in 2008, said her global experience is an important credential. “Events in the Middle East—particularly in Syria and Iraq—are an area of concern. Her background at the State Department and her knowledge would be a valuable asset,” he said.

Asked about Mrs. Clinton’s ratings, the Republican governor of Iowa, Terry Branstad, pointed to a similar tumble on the part of Mr. Obama. “She was part of his administration,” he said.