Can Anyone Still Take the U.N. Seriously?

No, it is not April Fools Day, and this story is not a joke.

Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged "immodest."

Just days after Iran abandoned a high-profile bid for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, it began a covert campaign to claim a seat on the Commission on the Status of Women, which is "dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women," according to its website.

Apparently this move was unopposed by everyone, including the United States. Nice job standing up for human rights.

Never Thought I'd Say This...

...and get ready for Hell to freeze over ... but Keith Olbermann makes an excellent point.

Yes, you read that right. The guy is a raving left-wing loon, but he is right about the senate healthcare bill, specifically the requirement that all Americans purchase government approved insurance. He lays out what it will cost the President:

[T]his bill costs you the [support of the political] left —and anybody who now has to pony up 17 percent of his family’s income to buy this equivalent of Medical Mobster Protection Money.

Olbermann continued:

The mandate in this bill … must be stripped out...It is above all else immoral and a betrayal of the people who elected you….

And this sounds awfully rebellious:

I am one of the self-insured, albeit by choice. And I hereby pledge that I will not buy this perversion of health care reform. Pass this at your peril, Senators, and sign it at yours, Mr. President.

I will not buy this insurance.

Brand me a lawbreaker if you choose.

Fine me if you will.

Jail me if you must.

Wow, I couldn't have said it any better myself. What a weird feeling to agree with him...

Granted his reasons for opposing it are much different than mine, as you can see reading the entire post. He's ticked that it is not fully socialized. But I understand his dislike of the mandate. The enemy of my enemy is my friend? . . . well, maybe not quite yet.

Why Trying the 9/11 Terrorists in NYC is a BAD Idea

An excellent analysis of why trying Khalid Shiekh Mohammud in New York is a colossal mistake. The legal jargon is a little dense, sorry.

The writer is an attorney who lays out how the trial will inevitably play out. I think he's exactly right. We've seen this already in the trial of Zacharias Moussoui (however it's spelled), the alleged 20th hijacker. In short it will be a massive media circus, cost incredible amounts of money, give the confessed terrorists an international platform and publicity, and require that the U.S. disclose our secret intelligence gathering techniques. Not to mention setting the defense attorneys up for life financially, and ruining the reputation of the U.S. legal system.

He also speculates on the President's motivations for bringing the trials here, and concludes that it is part of a sinister left-wing plot. On that point I think he gives President Obama too much credit. A plot requires competence and planning. I'm not sure it's a plot, so much as just plain stupidity, naivete, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the world and of human nature coupled with a disdain for any policy or measure enacted by President Bush.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'd rather see them tried at the International Criminal Court. It's reputation has no where to go but up, and when the terrorists are all freed, it would help cement public opinion against international institutions, and strengthen faith in America. All the opposite outcomes of a trial in NYC.

In Praise of the Great Leader!

The lyrics are here (there were two songs) if you have the stomach for it. Now, I know the President didn't have anything to do with this, but when I saw this, it literally sent a chill down my spine. This is how you build up a cult of personality. We do NOT do this kind of thing in America!

As an adult, fine, sing whatever you want, you have the freedom to do so. But to teach children this kind of thing in school is just plain wrong. Music has power, it conveys emotions very effectively.

We teach children songs to impress upon them that some things are worthy of respect or worship. We teach them to sing about our country, and our freedoms because we have reverence for them. At Church we teach them to sing praise to God because we reverence Him.

We do not worship our leaders in this country!

We do not bow to kings or presidents. All men are created equal. This is not the Soviet Union, and this is not North Korea. Leaders come and go, we revere the freedoms and ideas upon which our nation was founded, not whomever happens to have won the last election.

Just two more points:

1. Whoever did this is completely ignorant of history at best, and insane at worst and should not be anywhere near children.
2. This is showing up almost nowhere on the news. Can you imagine the uproar if kids were taped singing a song praising President Bush or the Iraq war?
3. Ok, three points. Maybe we didn't need to worry about the President's address to school children, maybe we need to worry about which teachers have complete access to our kids every Monday - Friday for 6 - 8 hours.

Is this the next song they'll learn?

Sensible Healthcare Reform

I've resisted posting on healthcare reform here for 2 reasons:

1. No one wants to read a 10,000 word rant complete with charts and analogies.
2. I can't find the time to write said 10,000 word rant.

So, I leave it to others with greater powers of brevity. Charles Krauthammer has two suggestions that should be tried before any radical restructuring of the current healthcare system. They will genuinely reduce costs and lessen the influence of government in our lives.

(1) Tort reform: As I wrote recently, our crazy system of casino malpractice suits results in massive and random settlements that raise everyone's insurance premiums and creates an epidemic of defensive medicine that does no medical good, yet costs a fortune.

I'm a lawyer, and even I agree with that. The inability of malpractice insurance companies to predict what crazy awards juries will give leads to astronomical premiums. In addition, it causes doctors to order unnecessary procedures "just to make sure:"

An authoritative Massachusetts Medical Society study found that five out of six doctors admitted they order tests, procedures and referrals -- amounting to about 25 percent of the total -- solely as protection from lawsuits. Defensive medicine, estimates the libertarian/conservative Pacific Research Institute, wastes more than $200 billion a year.

Krauthammer envisions something like the workers' compensation plan to handle malpractice incidents.

Abolish the entire medical-malpractice system. Create a new social pool from which people injured in medical errors or accidents can draw. The adjudication would be done by medical experts, not lay juries giving away lottery prizes at the behest of the liquid-tongued John Edwardses who pocket a third of the proceeds.

The pool would be funded by a relatively small tax on all health-insurance premiums. Socialize the risk; cut out the trial lawyers. Would that immunize doctors from carelessness or negligence? No. The penalty would be losing your medical license. There is no more serious deterrent than forfeiting a decade of intensive medical training and the livelihood that comes with it.

Second, uncouple health insurance from employment and from geography:

(2) Real health-insurance reform: Tax employer-provided health care benefits and return the money to the employee with a government check to buy his own medical insurance, just as he buys his own car or home insurance.

There is no logical reason to get health insurance through your employer. This entire system is an accident of World War II wage and price controls. It's economically senseless. It makes people stay in jobs they hate, decreasing labor mobility and therefore overall productivity. And it needlessly increases the anxiety of losing your job by raising the additional specter of going bankrupt through illness. . . . If we additionally eliminated the prohibition on buying personal health insurance across state lines, that would inject new and powerful competition that would lower costs for everyone.

Good common-sense things to try which will lower the cost of medical care and reduce both the need for, and the cost of, health insurance.

Obama's Real Economic Views

This is how Senator Obama talks about economic issues when he's not on his guard. This clip is from an interview he gave with Chicago Public Radio (a friendly audience) in 2001.

Scary stuff. Sounds like Marx's "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Watch the clip here.

Read a more spirited condemnation on the National Review. An excerpt:

I would appeal to any American who claims to love the Constitution and to revere the Founding Fathers… I will not only appeal to you, I will beg you, as one American citizen to another, to consider this next statement with as much care as you can possibly bring to bear: “And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and [the] Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [it] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

The entire purpose of the Constitution was to limit government. That limitation of powers is what has unlocked in America the vast human potential available in any population.

Barack Obama sees that limiting of government not as a lynchpin but rather as a fatal flaw. . .

There is no room for wiggle or misunderstanding here. This is not edited copy. There is nothing out of context; for the entire thing is context — the context of what Barack Obama believes. You and I do not have to guess at what he believes or try to interpret what he believes. He says what he believes. . .

If this does not frighten you — regardless of your political affiliation — then you deserve what this man will deliver with both houses of Congress, a filibuster-proof Senate, and, to quote Senator Obama again, “a righteous wind at our backs.”

We no longer have an independent, fair, investigative press. That is abundantly clear to everyone — even the press. It is just another of the facts that they refuse to report, because it does not suit them.

Remember this, America: The press did not break this story. A single citizen, on the Internet did.

There is a special hell for you “journalists” out there, a hell made specifically for you narcissists and elitists who think you have the right to determine which information is passed on to the electorate and which is not.

That hell — your own personal hell — is a fiery lake of irrelevance, blinding clouds of obscurity, and burning, everlasting scorn.

You’ve earned it.

Electoral Food for Thought

This article may be a little harsh on Obama, but not much in my opinion. Unlike much political opinion, the author does in fact link to supporting evidence.

None of this would go unreported if McCain had said or done it. Anyway read it and weigh it yourself. I find some of it persuasive, some not. But an Obama presidency would not be a good thing.

"Time to use the C word."

Change You Can Believe In - Part I: Economics.

(Sorry, this is a little long).

I was glancing through Senator Obama's "Blueprint For Change" which outlines his policies and priorities, when I began to wonder how much spending has been promised. I decided to search to whole document and find out. All quotes are directly from Obama's Blueprint. Keep in mind that these are only the items that Obama has promised that include a specific dollar amount. I've done my best to weed out duplicate spending and to be generally fair. Let's start with a piece of Obama's plan I agree with:

Obama will reinstate pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budget rules, so that new spending or tax cuts are paid for by spending cuts or new revenue (ie tax increases) elsewhere.

Well, it's about time! Keep this in mind. I'll come back to it later. Let's take a look at how much spending Senator Obama will need to offset.

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First direct spending promises:

reduce a typical family’s premiums by as much as $2,500 per year (through government-funded health care)

Cost: 100 billion dollars/year (400 billion for his first term)

(Guessing conservatively, at an average of $1000 times 100 million families; this jives with Obama's own estimated cost for his health insurance plan).

$10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems.

Cost: 10 billion/year (50 billion total)

Obama will provide a $1.5 billion fund to assist states with start-up costs (of FMLA reform)

Total cost: 1.5 billion total

Create Automatic Workplace Pensions -employers who do not currently offer a retirement plan, will be required to enroll their employees in a direct-deposit IRA account that is compatible to existing direct-deposit payroll systems...His plan will match 50 percent of the first $1,000 of savings for families that earn less than $75,000.

This one is hard to price. Considering the number of families earning less than 75,000 (a large majority) the cost could be enormous. Besides, I thought social security was the answer:

“We … have an obligation to protect Social Security and ensure that it’s a safety net the American people can count on today, tomorrow and forever.
–Barack Obama, Speech in Des Moines, IA, October 27, 2007

So, we won't count that one.

Obama will invest $150 billion over ten years to deploy clean technologies

Cost: 15 billion/year (150 billion total)

Obama will create a Clean Technologies Venture Capital Fund to fill a critical gap in U.S. technology development. Obama will invest $10 billion per year into this fund for five years

Cost: 10 billion/year (50 billion total)

Obama will invest $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs and career pathway programs

Cost: .2 billion/year (1 billion total)

He will provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees

cost: 2 billion total

he will double our foreign assistance to $50 billion to achieve that goal (cutting world poverty)

Total cost: 25 billion/year

Total Spending: 679.5 billion dollars.

Total ongoing yearly spending: 160.2 billion dollars.

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Now let's look at new tax cuts:

Obama will cut income taxes by $1,000 for working families to offset the payroll tax they pay

Cost: 20 billion/year (if 20% of families are "working").

Obama will create a new “Making Work Pay” tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family.

Cost: 20 billion/year (see above assumptions)

Obama will create a 10 percent universal mortgage credit to provide tax relief to homeowners who do not itemize. This credit will provide an average of $500 to 10 million homeowners

Cost: 5 billion dollars

an immediate tax cut averaging $1,400 to 7 million seniors

Cost: 9.8 billion dollars

Obama will create a new  American Opportunity Tax Credit...This $4,000 tax credit will be fully refundable...

Also very hard to value. Potentially huge. We'll ignore this one too.

Total tax cuts per year: 54.8 billion dollars.

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So, by Obama's own reckoning, every year (for at least 5 years)the federal government will need to come up with a minimum of 215 billion dollars additional tax revenue (54.8 billion + 160.2) if Obama is really going to offset these expenses. Of course this also assumes zero spending growth for every other government agency and program: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Military spending, interest on the debt, Education, etc . . . . or Obama could cut spending . . . (yeah, that's going to happen).

Total federal tax revenue for 2007 was 2568 billion dollars. The needed tax increase will, therefore, be 8.4% on average for every taxpaying entity in America. The reality will be much greater for some taxpayers and corporations than others given the fact that nearly 50% of taxpayers pay no income taxes, and Obama's stated preference for raising taxes only on corporations and "the rich."

This minimum increase excludes onetime spending and several ongoing programs I listed above. It also excludes many other programs, funds, grants, commissions and panels which are promised but not given a dollar value.

It also does not include the "cap and trade" carbon reduction program which amounts to an enormous tax on energy production. It also excludes the "windfall profits tax" on the oil companies. It does not include the cost to business of increasing the minimum wage or of compliance with any of the additional regulations Obama proposes.

Finally, this assumes that nothing goes over-budget - this is the government we're talking about here.

This is the minimum cost of "change you can believe in."