ON HEALTHCARE

While speaking to the American Medical Association, President B. H. Obama was being a tad disingenuous when he told them:

"Let me also address an illegitimate concern that's being put forward by those who are claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan Horse for a single-payer system. I'll be honest: There are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well. But I believe -- and I've taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief -- that it's important for our efforts to build on our traditions here in the United States. So when you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They're not telling the truth."

Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson commented on BHO's speech to the AMA with this characterization:

"It's hard to know whether President Obama's health care 'reform' is naive, hypocritical or simply dishonest. Probably all three. The president keeps saying it's imperative to control runaway health spending. He's right. The trouble is that what's being promoted as health care 'reform' almost certainly won't suppress spending and, quite probably, will do the opposite."

Dr. William Campbell Douglass II writes about Obama's health plan and notes the AMA'S opposition to it:

This could be a stormy summer if the debate over Obama's health care plan hits Congress in the coming weeks. As it is, battle lines are already being drawn up and salvos are being fired by both sides. And not just by Republicans and Democrats: recently the American Medical Association (AMA) weighed in on the latest details of Obama's so-called "public insurance plan"... and they're against it.

In spite of the fact that the AMA is the country's largest physician's group, it doesn't have as much political pull as it used to have in the old days, but there's no doubt that the organization's non-endorsement of the Obama plan will (thankfully) make it more difficult to pass.

It's probably tough to tell from reading the paper or watching the TV news these days, but there are actually people out there who know more than President Obama. And the AMA's opposition to Obama's health care plan is based on something that the President has very little of: experience.

The Obama Administration has just begun to leak the specifics of the healthcare plan, and after seeing the initial broad strokes, the AMA has concluded that health care should still be "provided through private markets as they are currently."

"The introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans," the AMA said in comments submitted to the Senate Finance Committee.

And it's true: the end result of the Obama proposals would be to tear down the current health care system of private health that's taken care of the majority of our nation's 350 million people... all so we can be sure that the 10 million or so of the population (and that's being generous) that don't have insurance can be cared for -- at massive expense to the taxpayer.

All of these debates are going to heat up, and Obama is going to make his case for the plan at an address to the AMA in Chicago. But finally, it's not just talk radio pundits and the odd Republican pointing out the obvious flaws in the Obama plan, but the doctors themselves -- the people who will be at the sharp end should this plan come to pass.

One bone of contention is government mandated physician participation. The government would strong-arm doctors into accepting the plan by requiring doctors who currently accept Medicare patients to be a part of the new public health plan.

The AMA has said that it won't back a plan that mandates physician participation since "many physicians and providers may not have the capability to accept the influx of new patients that could result from such a mandate." Which, of course, makes sense: while the government plan will expand coverage, it has no provisions for expanding the infrastructure or size of the current healthcare industry. The result will surely be system overload virtually overnight.

Clearly, we're headed for a showdown. And unfortunately, I think that it will be the AMA and doctors that blink first -- or will be forced to blink. After all, the doctors can hardly wage a scorched earth political campaign against the same Democrats whose help they need to increase the fees for Medicare. So of course, the true power rests not in the hands of the people, but the government. And bigger government is always part of Obama's grand plan.

Barack Obama: Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
By Ben Shapiro

President Barack Obama’s ego is like an agitated puppy: it requires constant attention and a good deal of petting. Fortunately for Obama, world leaders recognize his insecurities and cater to them. Unfortunately for America, world leaders have realized that by catering to those insecurities, they can keep the president distracted just long enough to do what they want. READ MORE....

Obama’s AmeriCrooks and Cronies Scandal
By Michelle Malkin

President Obama promised he would end “Washington games.” But his abrupt firing of the AmeriCorps inspector general is more of the same. The brewing scandal smells like the Beltway cronyism of the Bush years. And the apparent meddling of first lady Michelle Obama in the matter smacks of the corruption of the Clinton years. If Obama keeps up with this “change,” we’ll be back to the Watergate era by Christmas. MORE...

COMMENTARY

Obama: ‘There Are Countries Where a Single-Payer System Works Pretty Well’
By Terence P. Jeffrey

President Obama told the American Medical Association on Monday that he thinks single-payer health care systems—socialized medicine—work “pretty well” in other countries, but that he does not want to create such a system here because he wants to “build on our traditions.” In fact, the predictable endgame of the health care plan Obama is trying to rush through Congress this summer is socialized medicine. Obama is paving a one-way street to socialized medicine while expressly denying he is doing so—and while accusing those who point out what he is doing of being untruthful. MORE....

Argentine Glacier Advances Despite Global Warming

Senate Committee Begins Work on Expensive Health Care Bill

Energy Bill Advances in Senate
By H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press

Washington (AP) - Legislation that would require greater use of renewable energy, make it easier to build power lines and allow oil and gas drilling near Florida's coast advanced Wednesday in the Senate.
 
The Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 15-8 to clear the measure, although both Democrats and Republicans - for different reasons - said they had concerns about the bill and hoped to make major changes on the Senate floor.

Report Says 200 Housing Agencies Regularly Bounced Checks; HUD Monitoring 'Inadequate'
(CNSNews.com) - The Government Accountability Office published a report in June saying that 200 federal housing agencies regularly wrote bad checks of $25,000 or more between 2002 and 2006 -- a situation that's ripe for fraud, the report said. The report urges the Department of Housing and Urban Development to overhaul its oversight mechanisms to better identify at-risk housing agencies.

YOU ARE WASTING YOUR BREATH

Obama, South Korean Leader, Demand North Korea Drop ‘Belligerent’ Behavior
White House (CNSNews.com) - South Korean President Lee Myung-bak expressed harsh criticism of North Korea when speaking at the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday. “North Koreans must understand that they will not be able to gain compensation by provoking a crisis,” Lee said of the northern Communist nation with nuclear ambitions along its border.

FCC Chairman Nominee: ‘I Do Not Support’ Reinstating Fairness Doctrine
Washington (CNSNews.com) - Julius Genachowski, President Obama’s nominee to become chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told a Senate committee Tuesday that he does not support reinstatement of the 'Fairness Doctrine.' "I feel strongly about the First Amendment and I don’t think the FCC should be involved in censorship of content based on (limiting) political speech,” Genachowski said.

Major Newspapers Expunge Obama’s Comment That 'Single-Payer System Works Pretty Well’
(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama told the American Medical Association Monday that he believes single-payer health care systems have worked "pretty well" in some countries, but no major U.S. newspaper available in the Nexis database reported the president's comment in their news stories about the speech.

CBO Says Dems’ $1-Trillion Health Care Plan Would Eliminate Private Insurance for 23 Million
(CNSNews.com) - A government overhaul of America's health care system would cost at least $1 trillion and would eliminate private coverage for an estimated 23 million Americans, according to a preliminary analysis issued Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office. Leading Democrats, however, say the CBO’s numbers do not account for savings the plan would create. They say some of the costs could be covered by taxing certain “unhealthy” foods, such as sugar.

Ken Blackwell : Israel in Danger

In his speech in Cairo earlier this month, President Obama essentially bought into the Arab position on Israel—that the creation of the Jewish state in the Middle East was a result of European guilt for the Holocaust. Read more.

Bachmann fears ACORN role in census - Washington Times

By Stephen Dinan

Outspoken Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann says she's so worried that information from next year's national census will be abused that she will not fill out anything more than the number of people in her household.

Conyers' wife focus of bribery probe - Washington Times

Conyers' wife focus of bribery probe
Payments tied to Detroit vote

By Andrea Billups and Jerry Seper

DETROIT | Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers, the wife of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr., has been ensnared in a federal bribery investigation and is discussing a possible plea deal, The Washington Times has learned. Read more.

Federal Reserve to gain power under plan - Washington Times

Federal Reserve to gain power under plan
Targets dangers to economy

By Patrice Hill

The Federal Reserve, already arguably the most powerful agency in the U.S. government, will get sweeping new authority to regulate any company whose failure could endanger the U.S. economy and markets under the Obama administration's regulatory overhaul plan. Read more.

Bush takes swipes at Obama policies - Washington Times

Defends interrogations
By Joseph Curl

ERIE, Pa.| Former President George W. Bush fired a salvo at President Obama on Wednesday, asserting his administration's interrogation policies were within the law, declaring the private sector -- not government -- will fix the economy and rejecting the nationalization of health care.

"I know it's going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we're in," the former president said to applause from members of a local business group. "You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money." Read more.

EXCLUSIVE:
Cuban spies' shortwave radios go undetected - Washington Times

Low-tech transmissions no big deal for U.S. intelligence

By Carmen Gentile THE WASHINGTON TIMES
EXCLUSIVE

MIAMI | A retired State Department officer and his wife who are accused of spying for Cuba appear to have avoided capture for 30 years because their communications with the Caribbean island were too low-tech to be detected by sophisticated U.S. monitors. Read more.

"Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country."

--Noah Webster--

Israel's military planning for a multi-front war

TEL AVIV — Israel's military has intensified coordination between the army and air force to conduct simultaneous operations in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Officials said the effort reflects an assessment that Israel's next war would include such adversaries as Hamas, Hizbullah and Syria.

Read more.

Leftwing hate crime? Rev. Jeremiah Wright and James Von Brunn

By Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media

James Von Brunn, who believed that “Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do,” attacked the Holocaust Museum and killed a guard on the same day it was being reported on a national basis that Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright had said that “Them Jews ain’t going to let him [Obama] talk to me.” It sounded as if they were reading from the same tract.

The Wright comments undercut the left-wing campaign  .....

Words from Obama sure to light N. Korea's fuse

By Donald Kirk

WASHINGTON — If words were launched as missiles rather than missives, the United States and North Korea would be firing salvo on salvo in an escalating war in which much of the North would be in ruins and parts of the U.S. in flames.

It was one thing for North Korea ...

Former top Iran official cites fissures in regime, calls on Obama to stand with the people

By Jason Fuchs, Global Information System

A Washington-based leader of Iran's exiled nationalist opposition has reported significant dissent at high levels in Iran's...

HEALTHCARE: OBAMA'S WATERLOO?

 By DICK MORRIS

To quote the esteemed Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the chickens that were hatched in the stimulus package are coming home to roost in the healthcare proposal. The budget deficit Obama racked up paying for the massive federal spending passed in January is now having a real economic and political impact, which is forcing the president and his congressional allies into hard choices as they face his healthcare legislation. Read more.

Security at Places of Worship: More Than a Matter of Faith

STRATFOR
Global Security & Intelligence Report
By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

In recent months, several high-profile incidents have raised awareness of the threat posed by individuals and small groups operating under the principles of leaderless resistance. These incidents have included lone wolf attacks against a doctor who performed abortions in Kansas, an armed forces recruitment center in Arkansas and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Additionally, a grassroots jihadist cell was arrested for attempting to bomb Jewish targets in the Bronx and planning to shoot down a military aircraft at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y.

In addition to pointing out the threat posed by grassroots cells and lone wolf operatives, another common factor in all of these incidents is the threat of violence to houses of worship. The cell arrested in New York left what they thought to be active improvised explosive devices outside the Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Community Center. Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in the lobby of the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. Although Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad conducted his attack against a Little Rock recruiting center, he had conducted preoperational surveillance and research on targets that included Jewish organizations and a Baptist church in places as far away as Atlanta and Philadelphia. And while James von Brunn attacked the Holocaust Museum, he had a list of other potential targets in his vehicle that included the National Cathedral.

In light of this common thread, it might be instructive to take a more detailed look at the issue of providing security for places of worship. Read more.

COMMENTARY

Liberals Say Conservatives are Haters and Hate Them for it.
Journalists help empower anger that now targets constitutional rights; ignore left-wing hate.