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2010-04-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

America Wants To Know is in the process of migrating from Blogger to Wordpress and it's possible that your bookmark for this blog is bringing you to a page that just refuses to be updated.

Sorry about that.

When the migration is complete, this link will work permanently: http://www.AmericaWantsToKnow.com

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Due to the technological cluelessness of your charming hostess, the blog may look a little crooked for awhile and some of the links to the archives may not work.

Like we have nothing else to do, now we have to learn Wordpress....

Thanks for reading America Wants To Know, and thanks in advance for your patience, and for any broken link reports or Wordpress tips you'd like to pass along by e-mail to Susan@ExtremeInk.com.

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Ben Stein's mistake

2010-04-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

Ben Stein is a smart guy.

He has a degree in economics from Columbia University and was valedictorian of his class at Yale Law School.

He has worked as a White House speechwriter and lawyer, an economist, a trial attorney and a teacher. He has written thirty books, some screenplays, and columns for highly respected newspapers and magazines.

This proves that you can be very, very smart and still be very, very wrong.

Today on Fox News, Ben Stein was asked by Megyn Kelly what he thought about President Obama's unscripted comment this week during remarks about financial reform. "I do think," the President of the United States said, "at a certain point you've made enough money."

Ben Stein said the president was totally wrong, and then he made the mistake. He explained why the president was wrong.

Mr. Stein said wealthy people keep what they need for a nice life and give the rest to charity.

That's a mistake, but not for the reason you're thinking. The statement may be completely true, and for the sake of argument let's assume that it is.

The mistake is in accepting the premise that wealth is immoral unless it benefits people who didn't earn it. That premise leads to the conclusion that government has a legitimate interest in taking wealth from some people in order to benefit other people. You can argue that morality is not the province of government, but you have already conceded that something immoral is happening and now you're in the position of arguing that government should do nothing about it.

This is exactly how the Republicans get into trouble with the voters. They concede the premise that wealth is immoral unless it benefits people who didn't earn it. The premise is embodied in the phrase "trickle-down economics" and in the Biblical admonition, often quoted by President George W. Bush, "To whom much is given, much is expected."

Here is a different argument to make against "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money": The statement justifies unlimited government power over individual rights and private property, and that is the end of freedom in America.

Under the U.S. Constitution, it is none of the government's business whether you need what you have. The power of the government is limited. Individual rights and private property are protected. That's what makes this a free country. Freedom is not an accident of history or a supernatural phenomenon that can't be fully understood by mortal men.

If the American people allow government officials to interpret the Constitution in a way that removes the limits on government power, our freedom will be a casualty of our good intentions.

George Washington warned us about this in his Farewell Address. "If in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong," our first president said in 1796, "let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."

There's a reason Washington's portrait hangs in the Oval Office.

Under this administration, it's a dartboard.

Copyright 2010

Source note: Washington's Farewell Address can be read online in the archives of the University of Virginia at this link: http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/farewell/transcript.html

Editor's note: You might be interested in reading "Defending Capitalism" and "The Tyranny of the Children" at www.SusanShelley.com and in the 2008 post, "Barack Obama: 'We don't mind'" and the 2007 post, "Barack Obama explains socialism."

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In defense of the banks

2010-04-24T18:36:00.000-07:00

Politico.com has a story today by Jeanne Cummings and Chris Frates headlined "No one marching for the banks."

It reports that the AFL-CIO plans to lead marches down Wall Street next week in support of President Obama's financial reform proposal. Ten thousand people, organizers claim, will march on Wells Fargo and Bank of America.

JP Morgan Chase asked its employees to write their congressmen and senators to tell them that over half a million people who work in the financial services industry would be adversely affected by some of the proposed changes in the law.

"It’s unlikely that rallying cry will spark much of a popular uprising against the financial regulation reform legislation," Politico reported. "If anything, it underscores the inability of the Big Banks and their allies to latch onto a phrase or argument that could resonate with the public and provide the industry’s Republican defenders with the leverage to reverse the momentum in the regulation fight."

Oh yeah? Is that a dare?

How's this:

In Defense of the Banks

By Susan Shelley

Everyone should be able to get a loan, and no one should have to pay it back.

That's the Obama Doctrine on financial reform.

Banks should be making loans to folks who want to buy cars and houses and start small businesses, and if the folks can't pay back the loans because they're struggling, the banks should make modifications to the loans.

Why should the banks do this?

Because bankers are dastardly evil villains who stole your money for high living and good times.

AmericaWantsToKnow.com predicted in a 2008 post titled "Hank Paulson's casting call" that the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout, which was forced on all the major banks whether they wanted the money or not, was a slick trick to shift the blame for the foreclosure crisis to the banks and away from the politicians who created incentives and guarantees that caused traditional lending standards to be abandoned.

After all, lending standards cause people to be turned down for loans. Banks typically can't stay in business by making loans to people who don't have the ability to pay them back.

Unless the federal government guarantees the loans.

Then it's no problem at all to make loans to people who can't pay them back, because the government promises to pay the bankers with your tax dollars if the borrowers default. That way, politicians get credit for helping struggling folks buy homes.

And when the folks don't pay and the government makes good on its guarantee and gives tax dollars to the bankers, guess what?

The bankers are dastardly evil villains who stole your money for high living and good times.

If you own a home and you're older than five you probably remember the days when you had to take a wheelbarrow to the mailbox to carry all the solicitations for home equity loans, refinancing loans, second mortgage loans and home equity lines of credit. Some of them came with a pre-printed check attached to a cheery message: Just sign it and deposit it and buy yourself a vacation, a new car, a new kitchen, whatever you want! There was small print on the back but, you know, life is short.

A lot of people spent their home equity as if it was a monthly check from the California Lottery.

A lot of people gambled and bought houses and condos as a get-rich-quick investment.

A lot of people were shocked and dismayed when home values declined.

Some of them put the keys in the lock, called the bank and said, "Come get your house."

But so distorted was the mortgage market by implicit and explicit government loan guarantees that financial institutions all around the globe had purchased mortgage-backed securities in the belief that they were completely safe.

When it turned out that they weren't, the panicked Bush administration pressured Congress for an $800 billion bailout fund to buy up the "toxic" securities and prevent a worldwide financial collapse.

The TARP fund never did buy up the troubled assets. The money was pushed out to "stabilize" the banks, against the will of the banks in many cases.

So let's be clear. If anybody took your money for high living and good times, it's not the executives of the major U.S. banks. It's the folks who are now struggling after borrowing money they never should have been loaned in the first place.

Cold, but true. Not all, but many of the people who are threatened with foreclosure borrowed recklessly and bought a nicer house or blew the money on fun stuff they couldn't afford any other way.

Now President Obama and the Democrats in the House and Senate are trying to reform financial regulations with the stated goal of maintaining financial stability in the future.

When you are on the wrong premise, Ayn Rand wrote, you will always achieve the opposite of what you intend.

Here's one premise: the banks must ease their lending standards to make more loans and must modify the existing loans of customers who are struggling.

Here's another premise: the banks must maintain sound lending practices and hold their customers to the contracts they sign.

On which premise are we more likely to achieve financial stability, and on which are we likely to achieve the opposite?

History has the answer, and you don't have to look back too far to find it.

Of course, President Obama and the Congressional Democrats may not intend to protect financial stability as much as they intend to protect their own power to pressure the banks into doubling as social welfare agencies.

The proposed financial reform bill would give the executive branch of the federal government the power to pre-emptively close down any bank or non-bank financial institution if government officials believe it poses a systemic threat to financial stability. Without any benchmarks, standards or specifics, simply on the say-so of a politician or his appointee, a financial conglomerate could be threatened with an immediate liquidation that would wipe out the debt-holders, the shareholders, and the employees.

Government officials who have that kind of power won't even have to ask for what they want. Financial institutions will be working day and night to find ways to please them.

Here's a premise: President Obama and the Democrats want to have unlimited, invisible and unaccountable power to force the titans of the financial industry to do whatever they say.

That must be the right premise. The plan they have drawn up will achieve it perfectly.

April 24, 2010

Editor's note: "Hank Paulson's Casting Call" was posted to AmericaWantsToKnow.com on October 17, 2008.

Portrait of a volcano

2010-04-11T15:47:00.001-07:00

America Wants To Know reached the boiling point last month after one too many conversations with friends and relatives who happily, even eagerly, accept the idea that the federal government must take over anything that seems too difficult or expensive for ordinary people to manage on their own.

Late at night, we went to the Meetup.com website and signed up to organize a group called "Freedom-Loving Fiscal Conservatives of L.A."

At the last click of the set-up, we chickened out. But a couple of weeks later, boiling again, we clicked it.

A few days went by and then Meetup sent out an e-mail to let other members know that the new group had been formed.

This is a screen shot of my e-mail inbox after that message went out.

Click the picture to view full-size.

Between 6:04 p.m. on Saturday and 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, 39 people joined the group.

If this is happening in Los Angeles, imagine what's going on in Des Moines. And Cincinnati. And Pittsburgh.

You won't have to imagine much longer. November is coming.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: You might be interested in the previous posts, "Retiring Henry Waxman" and "Rep. Brad Sherman braves town hall meeting."

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Rep. Brad Sherman braves town hall meeting

2010-04-08T01:01:00.000-07:00

Iran's nuclear program is a far greater threat to Israel than the Obama administration's "tiff" with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) told a hastily scheduled town hall meeting at a synagogue in Woodland Hills, California, Wednesday night.

Sherman compared the drive for sanctions against Iran to "a car that's been going 5 mph for the last 13 years," and now "needs to go 85." He said under the Obama administration "the car's going 7 mph instead of 5 mph" and lamented, "This president is doing a very little bit at the very last minute."

The congressman from California's 27th District, which includes part of the east San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, passed up several opportunities to offer full-throated support of President Barack Obama.

Sherman said the president ought to speak out personally against the Palestinian Authority's incitement of hatred against Israel in its media and its schools. He said it should be denounced "at the highest levels, not relegated to lower-level folks at the State Department."

Asked why the president has not yet visited Israel, Sherman answered flatly, "I don't know."

Asked if the president feels as strongly as he does about the danger of Iran's nuclear program, he answered, "No president has felt as strongly as I do."

Asked why the White House did not condemn the recent renaming of a public square in the West Bank in honor of a Palestinian terrorist, Sherman said, "It should have been condemned at the presidential level and it wasn't."

The biggest applause of the evening came in response to the question, "Given President Obama's treatment of Israel, do you think more Jews will vote for the GOP?"

Sherman smiled at the raucous reaction and said he was confident that the people applauding had not voted for Obama the first time. Temple Aliyah's Rabbi Stewart Vogel asked Sherman if he would like to poll the group, and a show of hands revealed the crowd of approximately 300 people to be about 40 percent Obama voters, by Vogel's estimation.

Questions were submitted in writing and the congressman did not take questions on any other issues, inviting the audience to bring their concerns about health care and taxes to his next scheduled town hall meeting on July 11.

Sherman concluded by reminding Rabbi Vogel and the audience that fifteen members of Congress live within driving distance of their location. "I came," he said. "I don't know whether the other fourteen would have or not."

Temple Aliyah is located in the 30th congressional district, which is represented by Democrat Henry A. Waxman.

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That's the news, brought to you by your faithful correspondent, America Wants To Know, who was personally in attendance at this town hall meeting. We can tell you that it was a courteous crowd of concerned citizens without activists, protesters, interruptions, or fights.

Until now.

It was disturbing to hear a member of Congress minimize the significance of President Obama's condemnation of Israel over the announcement of new housing construction in Jerusalem. It was troubling to hear him dismiss the humiliating treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during last week's White House visit.

"A tempest in a teapot," Rep. Sherman said repeatedly. "Five years from now, nobody's going to remember it."

Whether anyone remembers it or not, the damage will be done. The message will be sent to the world that Israel is a bad actor, and therefore hostility to Israel is justified and appropriate.

The message will be sent that Hezbollah terrorists firing rockets over Israel's northern border and Hamas terrorists firing rockets from Gaza have a good point.

The message goes out that Israel's conduct is so egregious that even the United States can't take it anymore.

Is that a message the United States of America ought to be sending?

For one thing, it encourages every anti-Semite on the planet to come out of the dark and share his thoughts live on C-SPAN's call-in shows.

More importantly, it undercuts the strength of diplomatic language. How effective is it to characterize Iran and North Korea as outlaw nations defying the will of the "international community" for building nuclear bombs after you've characterized Israel the same way for building apartments?

Congressman Sherman emphasized that Israel receives $2.8 billion in armaments annually as a gift from the U.S. taxpayer. Actions, he said, speak louder than words, and regardless of the words that have come out of the Obama White House, not one penny in aid to Israel has been cut or will be cut.

The trouble with this analysis is that it ignores the many times the U.S. has asked Israel to stop fighting before it defeats its enemies. It ignores the many times the U.S. has called on Israel to sit still and take one for the team.

Remember the Scud missiles during the first Gulf war? Saddam Hussein fired missiles at Israel and the U.S. begged Israel not to do anything in retaliation, fearing it would open rifts in the coalition built by the first President Bush to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

That's just one example of many.

Every time Israel is threatened or attacked it is ready to go to war, and every time it doesn't go to war you can bet your U.S. tax dollar that our government has promised Israel arms and technology that will be sufficient to defeat the arms and technology we just sold the Arabs.

So let's not spend a lot of time whining that Israel's taking advantage of the U.S. taxpayer. We're paying them to teach their kids to use gas masks while they leave our Arab friends standing.

Why?

Probably because we fear that if these repressive regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Syria fall, al-Qaeda or its equivalent will control the world's oil supply.

There's always a reason.

Maybe even a good reason.

But just because we have to prop up these hideous regimes doesn't mean we have to stroke them and like it.

If they choose to keep themselves in power by diverting resentment and wailing to their populations that Israel is the enemy, the United States doesn't have to jump to its feet and shout, "Boy, howdy!"

We could treat Israel with the respect that's owed any free country.

And we would, if the Obama administration respected freedom.

Every day there's less evidence that they do.

Copyright 2010

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Retiring Henry Waxman

2010-04-01T02:02:00.000-07:00

If you thought it was delicious to replace Ted Kennedy with Scott Brown, you're going to love this fall's election in California's 30th Congressional District.

That's the Westside Los Angeles district currently represented by Rep. Henry Waxman. Don't know him? He's the surly thug who said during a hearing on the cap-and-trade climate bill that a reluctant public, like an uncooperative foreign government, has to be motivated by both carrots and sticks.

You can see it here on YouTube (about 4:22 into the clip):

The punitive Mr. Waxman made the comments to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was testifying that the cap-and-trade plan, which would discourage energy use with higher energy prices, would hurt the economy, increase unemployment, and raise the cost of living for American families.

"Mr. Gingrich, I'm sure glad you're not in charge of foreign policy," Rep. Waxman said. "Do you think the only way to incentivize a country is by offering them more and more carrots? You have to have some threat. And sometimes you have to say, 'To incentivize you, we're going to give you some assistance, but there are going to be consequences.'"

Newt Gingrich looked like a man who had just been handed the winning card in a game of gin rummy.

"Mr. Chairman, I don't think of American citizens the way I think of foreign dictators," the former Speaker of the House answered, "And I don't think this Congress should punish the American people. I think this Congress has every right to reward the American people, but I don't think Lincoln's government of the people, by the people and for the people should be turned into a government punishing the people, and that's a major difference."

Alas, Mr. Gingrich's words were not persuasive to the resentful man with the gavel. He rammed that cap-and-trade bill through his committee and helped to ram it through the House.

"You have to have some threat." That's the Waxman philosophy. When people won't do what you tell them to do, "there are going to be consequences."

After too many years in Congress, Henry Waxman has forgotten that his title is "Representative" and thinks it's "Executioner."

The chairman set up his guillotine on Capitol Hill last year to intimidate insurance company executives. Mr. Waxman sent a flood of angry letters to insurers demanding to see company records documenting salaries, stock options, company perks, conventions and retreats, claims, administrative and marketing expenses, and profits.

Last week the chopping block was put up again, this time for the top executives of AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar and Deere. The companies had just disclosed to shareholders that the health care reform law will cost them tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and may result in changes to the benefits currently provided to retirees and active employees.

Mr. Waxman was enraged by this and promptly sent letters to the companies' CEOs, demanding to see their accounting documentation and their e-mail correspondence. He told them to show up in front of his committee on April 21 to explain themselves.

What kind of an attitude is this in a free country?

Henry Waxman is not the principal of a middle school, and corporate executives are not drug dealers on the playground, and the American people are not truant twelve-year-olds.

The U.S. Constitution limits the power of the federal government, and arrogant power-lusters like Henry Waxman are the reason. When you watch him in action you can almost hear the voice of James Madison yelling, "I told you so!"

Madison made sure the members of the House of Representatives went home to their districts every two years to face the voters.

In the 30th Congressional District of California, where America Wants To Know happens to live, something new is waiting for Henry Waxman when he comes home to campaign.

A Republican challenger.

In the district that includes Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Malibu.

This is not an April Fools joke.

In June there will be a Republican primary in the 30th Congressional District and the man who's likely to win is David Benning, a pro-business candidate who supports a reduction in payroll taxes and lower corporate taxes. He believes that unpredictable future tax rates are hurting the economy and stifling growth. He favors policies that expand employment instead of policies that expand government and deficits.

Imagine replacing Henry Waxman with a pro-business Republican. Imagine pro-growth legislation on Capitol Hill and the guillotine on eBay.

Here's the link to David Benning's campaign web site:

www.BenningforCongress.com

And here's the link where you can chip in for Henry Waxman's retirement party:

https://www.fundraisingbynet.net/fbn/contributeFederal.asp?guidRegistration=5C5C5B58

Go ahead. Buy a balloon or two. The neck you save may be your own.

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Tabloid update: "What Laura's Hiding!"

2010-03-25T01:03:00.000-07:00

Have you been to the supermarket this week? The Globe tabloid is almost vibrating in its news racks, that's how excited it is to have the scoop on former first lady Laura Bush's long-awaited memoir.

Now we'll find out, the cover teases, about "Bush suicide fears," and "His 'other' woman" and their "Bitter divorce deal."

Ever since 2007, when the Globe reported that Laura Bush was keeping a "secret divorce diary" for a tell-all memoir that would "expose the painful truth" about her husband's drinking and cheating, the tabloid has been waiting for the day when the whole sordid story would finally come out.

Sorry to disappoint you, but the day has not yet come.

"Former First Lady Laura Bush was paid a whopping $2 million to pen a memoir of her White House years," the Globe complains, "but the biggest shockers are the sizzling secrets she WON'T be revealing in the new book."

Laura Bush: Spoken from the Heart is due out on May 4, and "insiders say" it will be "a whitewash," the Globe reports. Mrs. Bush gave in to her husband's begging and pleading and agreed "not to include any hint that their marriage collapsed while they were in the White House."

The Globe says Mr. Bush bought his wife a $2 million home in suburban Dallas and she lives in it alone, while he spends most of his time at the Crawford ranch.

The tabloid first reported in October of 2008 that the Bushes had reached a "super-secret pact" to end their marriage. A big house in Dallas was part of the deal.

But there's nothing in the former first lady's book about that, the Globe's sources say. There's nothing about the time she "stormed out of the White House and spent the night in Washington's Mayflower Hotel after a nasty confrontation."

Nothing about the "out-of-control boozing."

Nothing about "George's passionate fixation with his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice."

Nothing about the time Mrs. Bush moved out of the White House for several weeks because of her husband's drinking and "refusal to address the troubles in their marriage."

And nothing about "the tragic incident that still haunts Laura to this day when she killed her high school sweetheart in a car wreck."

Come on, you have to cut somewhere.

There are a couple of details in the Globe's story that we haven't heard before.

"Over the years, Laura's mistrust of George and bitterness toward Condi mushroomed," the tabloid reports, quoting an insider. "To this day, Laura hates Condi for not putting the rumors to rest one way or the other."

The Globe says Mrs. Bush confronted Secretary Rice several times and "never got a good answer from her."

Yes, "We thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction" is what she tells everybody.

Today the Bushes' marriage is over in all but name, the Globe says. They're staying together "just for show," and on those occasions when they do sleep under the same roof, "sources say they sleep in separate bedrooms and go days without speaking."

But Mrs. Bush finally decided not to write about "the fights and jealousies and suspicions," much to the relief of her husband. Friends told the Globe they feared the former president was suicidal at the thought of his wife revealing their secrets, and when she promised not to embarrass him, "he appeared to calm down."

Of course, he's not out of the woods yet.

Condoleezza Rice signed with the William Morris Agency and has a three-book deal.

The George W. Bush Library could be the second presidential library with an "Adults Only" section.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: Catch up on your tabloid reading with "Laura Gets $15M Divorce Payoff" (2008),"Laura's Secret Divorce Diary" (2007), "Bush Marital Turmoil" (2007), "Laura Claws Boozing Bush" (2008), and "All right, let's dish." (2006).

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Money bomb update: Just for fun

2010-03-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

Today, Republican candidate for Congress John Dennis is holding a money bomb event, trying to raise an attention-getting amount of money for his campaign to defeat Nancy Pelosi in California's 8th Congressional district.

Are you climbing the walls with anger over the health care bill? Are you typing "How to fight socialism" into the Google search box? Are you sick of the sanctimonious, preening politicians who insist that working Americans have a responsibility to pay the living expenses of, well, everybody else?

Is that what's troubling you, Bunky?

Maybe you'll feel better when you find out that the Internal Revenue Service will get $10 billion of your tax dollars to pay for enforcement of health care reform. The new law puts the IRS in charge of penalizing people who can afford health insurance but don't buy it, as well as subsidizing people who need it but can't afford it.

Good thing no one would ever lie on their tax returns just to avoid a huge fine or get free money.

While you still have an extra dollar lying around, you might want to use it to let Speaker Pelosi know how you feel:

www.johndennis2010.com

Even if you just send five dollars, or one dollar, you'll be helping by adding your name to the list of Americans who are serious about their opposition to higher taxes, bigger government, more debt, and collectivist policies that trample individual rights.

Donor lists like this can be rented to other candidates around the country, helping to rally support and turn out the vote this November.

Not everyone has the whole day free to ring doorbells and make phone calls. Not everyone is a college student or a government employee.

But people who work for a living can organize, too.

Today's money bomb: www.JohnDennis2010.com

Tell a friend.

Editor's note: You might be interested in the previous post, "Money bombing for freedom."

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Money bombing for freedom

2010-03-23T13:22:00.000-07:00

Do you remember buying your first computer? Maybe you went to a store, probably a store that's out of business now, and asked the salesperson which computer you should buy.

"It depends," they would typically answer. "Do you want to play games, edit video, do word processing? What do you want to do with it?"

Here's what we what want to do with it.

We want to bury the politicians who are taking our freedom, bit by bit, forcing us to check with Washington before we take any action: Does the government want me to do this? Will the government let me do this? Will the government subsidize me if I do this? Will the government fine me, or tax me, or denounce me if I do this?

Not to mention: What does the SEIU think? Is it good for the auto workers?

Even if you bought your computer for porn and online poker, you can use it today to fight for your freedom.

In the past, political fundraising was a daunting task for candidates who believe in freedom. All the money went to candidates who promised to give away free stuff.

It was a perfectly rational calculation on everybody's part.

Today we live in the world that was created by that bargain: government workers' unions with benefits and pensions and job security that far exceed anything that can be matched by comparable jobs in the private sector; businesses cutting jobs in the face of ruinous costs ordered by the government officials who were elected with the donations of government workers' unions.

The only way out is to lift the burden on the American people and allow economic activity to go unpunished.

The government gravy train must be derailed or we're all going to die shoveling coal into it.

Today America Wants To Know introduces a new feature: The Money Bomb Update.

Between now and November, we will be posting links to the campaigns of politicians who vow to restore freedom in America. If you send a small amount to each of them, even if it's just one dollar, you will be assisting their campaigns by helping them build a mailing list they can rent to other campaigns in the future. You'll be helping to demonstrate that there are millions and millions of American voters who are serious about protecting freedom from the well-intentioned butchers who are carving it up and giving it away with both hands.

Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul is trying to raise $300,000 today. He's fighting against a Republican establishment candidate who's less ideological and more willing to meet the Democrats halfway when they ignore the Constitution and usurp power to accomplish their desired policies.

"Let there be no change by usurpation," George Washington warned in his farewell address, "for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."

Today's money bomb: www.RandPaul2010.com

Tell a friend.

3-24-10: Update - From Rand Paul's website: "Rand Paul raised $261,880 on Tuesday in his "Give Me Liberty" Money Bomb. He has now raised $550,000 for the quarter and more than $2.3 million over the course of his stunningly successful campaign."

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Willie Wonka and the Health Care Bill

2010-03-20T01:10:00.000-07:00

Do you like fantasy stories?

Here's one for you.

The Democrats told the Congressional Budget Office that employers are going to raise everybody's wages after health care reform passes. Why? Because employers are going to save so much money on the lower health insurance premiums that result from the wonderful, amazing, marvelous, giant health care reform bill.

Have you heard? It spits golden coins into everybody's pockets. It's magical!

Last week, President Obama told an audience in Ohio that employers would see enormous reductions in the health care premiums they pay for their employees.

"Your employer, it's estimated, would see premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent," the president said, "which means they could give you a raise."

Later the White House said the president misspoke. He meant to say premiums would fall by as much as 3,000 dollars, not 3,000 percent.

But the president and all the Democrats continue to tell the story that employers will take the money they save on premiums and hand it out in wage increases.

Everybody loves a good fairy tale.

Do you think the Democrats might be indulging in a wild flight of fantasy and wishful thinking?

Lucky for them, the Congressional Budget Office isn't allowed to say so.

Officially, the CBO has to take the lawmakers at their word. If they assert that someday they're going to cut Medicare and put a 40 percent tax on union health benefits, the Congressional Budget Office has to score the bill as if they'll really do it.

And if the lawmakers say employers will raise wages, and payroll tax revenue will increase, then the Congressional Budget Office has to score the bill on the assumption that employers will raise wages and payroll tax revenue will increase.

"According to reports from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, part of the deficit savings over the next 10 years stems from increased Social Security revenues generated by the Cadillac tax," Politico reported Thursday.

It makes Alice in Wonderland look like a documentary.

Are you wondering how the Cadillac tax, which is the nickname for a tax on high-cost health insurance plans, increases Social Security revenues?

Social Security revenues come from a tax on wages.

So the only way the Cadillac tax can increase Social Security revenues is if it results in more jobs or higher wages.

Even the Democrats don't claim that taxing health insurance plans will create jobs, but they stand by their story that taxing health insurance plans will raise wages.

They're asserting -- even bragging -- that union members and others who currently have excellent health plans will lose them thanks to the new tax that's intended to make them unaffordable, but that's okay because employers will buy cheaper insurance plans for their employees and give them the difference in wage increases.

And this will increase the take from Social Security payroll taxes!

And that will lower the deficit!

And there's a unicorn in Michelle Obama's garden, and it's eating the lettuce!

Not to spoil a good story, but a few things stand in the way of these happy hikes. Employers are looking at higher taxes starting in 2011 when the Bush tax cuts expire. They're looking at new and higher taxes on capital gains and other investment income. They may be looking at higher energy costs due to the Democrats' proposed regulations on carbon dioxide emissions and there's always the chance that health insurance premiums won't go down at all and may even go up.

And you know what that means.

It's a conspiracy by the Birthers to bring down the president!

Isn't story time fun?

Incidentally, the vaunted deficit-reduction of the health care reform package was discredited by the Congressional Budget Office on Friday. Turns out the "doc fix," which was taken out of the bill and put into a separate bill, costs $208 billion over ten years and wipes out the professed deficit savings, leaving the health care bill $59 billion underwater.

That's why the Democrats took it out of the bill. Nobody likes the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to mess up a good story.

If you're not familiar with the "doc fix," it's an annual remedy for an earlier law that drastically cuts reimbursements to doctors who treat Medicare patients. The lower reimbursement rate makes the budget deficit look smaller on paper, but if Congress ever tried to put those lower reimbursements into effect, doctors would stop accepting new Medicare patients and might even stop seeing current patients.

Try as it might, the government can't force doctors to lose money, and it can't force insurance companies to lose money, and it can't force individuals to spend any of their own money buying health insurance policies.

All the government can do is whine and threaten and call everybody 'selfish' for refusing to shoulder their 'fair share' of other people's expenses.

Meanwhile, the government's costs for the new health care entitlement will go up, and up, and up.

And the deficit will go up, and up, and up.

And the taxes on people who hire people will go up, and up, and up.

And unemployment will go up, and up, and up.

This is a story without a happy ending.

Especially if you're a Democrat running for re-election.

Then, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, President Obama said he backs a "framework" for immigration reform that would require all Americans to have biometric national ID cards in order to work in this country, while providing a path to citizenship for immigrants who are in the country illegally.

By sheer coincidence, the House will be voting on the health care bill Sunday just as tens of thousands of people march on Washington for immigrants' rights. Someday soon, taxpayer-subsidized health insurance could be one of those rights.

The end.

Of the story, and likely of the Democratic majorities, and probably of President Obama's hopes for a second term or any 'achievements' in what's left of the first one. The end of the malignant daydream of utopian America, where everyone has a 'right' to be supported by other people, where the government decides who deserves to be subsidized and who deserves to pay the bill.

And we all lived happily ever after.

Copyright 2010

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Barack Obama's Rockettes problem

2010-03-05T16:34:00.000-08:00

When the world famous Radio City Music Hall Rockettes go into their signature high-kick routine, it appears to the audience that the dancers have their arms around each other's waists. But they don't.

"Rockettes don't actually hold on to each other," Rockette Kristin Jantzie explained in an interview, "We just gently touch the velvet of the costume."

That's so they don't all come crashing down if one of them falls.

Like the Rockettes, Members of Congress stand for election every two years in their own districts, each on their own two feet, not quite connected to the other members of their party, whatever it may look like from the audience.

President Obama called Democratic lawmakers to the White House on Thursday and reportedly instructed them that voting against health care reform would hurt their chances of re-election this fall.

Good luck with that.

If they didn't know how to get elected in their districts, they wouldn't be there in the first place.

While they're in Washington, Members of Congress have every reason to play along with the party leadership. That's how they get good committee assignments and that's how they get provisions added to legislation that will help them get re-elected.

Then they go home and campaign.

Sometimes they don't even include their party affiliation in their ads.

They know what they're doing. This is their area of expertise. This is what they do.

And there's nothing wrong with that. It's representative government in action. If the health care bill doesn't have enough votes in Washington, it's because it doesn't have enough support in the country.

So President Obama shouldn't be calling lawmakers in to instruct them.

He should be calling them in to listen to them.

Last November, President Obama pressured reluctant House Democrats to cast a difficult vote for the health care reform bill, telling the lawmakers that their 'yes' vote was necessary to keep the process moving forward.

This week the White House told those same Democrats that they can't 'flip-flop' now and vote no.

Sure they can.

Just watch them.

They're not going to fall like dominoes if they can help it.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier America Wants To Know post, "Dead you know."

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The Second Amendment and the big surprise

2010-03-03T02:03:00.000-08:00

The U.S. Supreme Court is about to decide the case of McDonald v. Chicago, which is expected to settle the question of whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is one of the rights that is "incorporated" into the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore binding on the state governments the same way it's binding on the federal government.

There was a dust-up in the oral arguments between Justice Antonin Scalia and attorney Alan Gura (who successfully argued the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case) over whether the incorporation could be accomplished through the Fourteenth Amendment's "privileges and immunities" clause instead of the "due process" clause that has been used to incorporate other rights in the past.

Justice Scalia said he doesn't like "substantive due process" but he has come to accept it, and he complained that Mr. Gura was trying to go against "140 years of our jurisprudence" to remake constitutional law. Justice Scalia accused the attorney of "bucking for a place on some law school faculty."

The snide comments only serve to call attention to the fact that the Incorporation Doctrine appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution and is the creation of imaginative judges, totally disconnected from the principle of government by consent of the governed.

Confused? Don't be. Here are the ten things you need to know about the Incorporation Doctrine in order to make sense of this debate:

1. When the Bill of Rights was written and ratified, it was intended and understood to apply only to the federal government. The powers of the states were limited only by their own state constitutions.

2. After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was written and ratified to put some limits on the powers of the states, but nobody at the time thought the Amendment made the Bill of Rights apply to the states.

3. From 1868 until 1925, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled over and over again that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states. Not once did anyone in Congress or the state legislatures stand up and say, "Hey! That's wrong! We meant for it to apply to the states!"

4. After everybody who debated and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment was safely dead, the U.S. Supreme Court quietly began to suggest that maybe the Fourteenth Amendment actually was intended to pick up certain parts of the Bill of Rights and make them apply to the states.

5. Over the course of the 20th century, the justices of the Supreme Court gradually added more and more rights to the list of rights that were "fundamental" enough to be "incorporated" into the Fourteenth Amendment. However, they left some wiggle room, permitting state laws that infringed those rights if the states could show "a compelling reason."

6. Nobody knows exactly what constitutes a "fundamental" right or a "compelling" reason. They have been different things at different times to different justices.

7. Because of the Incorporation Doctrine, states and cities can be sued in federal court over virtually any police procedure, school policy, local ordinance, state law, or state constitutional amendment.

8. Because of the Incorporation Doctrine, local and state voters have lost the power -- guaranteed to them by the always-ignored Tenth Amendment -- to have the laws they want on all kinds of controversial issues, including but not limited to: prayer in the schools, Ten Commandments displays, abortion, panhandling, pornography, flag-burning, drug searches, police interrogations, admissibility of evidence, jury trials, and the death penalty.

9. At no time did any voter, elected official, or state government formally consent to this arrangement, nor were they asked.

10. Under the Incorporation Doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court has invented various balancing tests to decide which fundamental-right-infringing laws will be allowed and which ones will be struck down. Each new decision is instantly binding on every jurisdiction in the country.

That brings us to the Second Amendment and the big surprise that awaits gun-rights supporters if the Supreme Court grants their wish: a ruling that the Second Amendment is "incorporated" and binding on the states.

It's actually worse for gun rights if the Second Amendment is incorporated than if it isn't.

For every Chicago gun ban that is struck down in one of these cases, there will be dozens or hundreds of jurisdictions that end up adopting gun restrictions they never had before. That's because the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually spell out certain kinds of gun regulations that are allowable, using one of its fundamental-rights-vs.-compelling-interests balancing tests.

That's when gun-control advocates will besiege every city council and state legislature and demand those regulations.

City and state lawmakers who previously would have rebuffed those demands with a firm Second Amendment argument will be stuck, forced to acknowledge that the Second Amendment allows whichever restrictions made the cut in the latest Supreme Court ruling on the subject.

The justices could use McDonald v. Chicago or another case like it to give the green light to gun registration, or mandatory trigger locks, or a ban on "assault weapons," or a safety-training requirement, or a ban on gun ownership by anyone who's ever been clinically depressed.

Can you imagine a politician standing up to the pressure for gun-control laws like these after the Supreme Court specifically rules that the Second Amendment allows them?

The Incorporation Doctrine simply transfers power from state and local governments to the federal courts. Just as local governments have to consult the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings before they can close down a topless bar next to a high school, they will have to study the Supreme Court's rulings on gun restrictions whenever gun-control advocates show up with a list of demands.

It's just a matter of time before somebody gets shot and a city is sued for not having gun-control laws.

The better way to protect gun rights is to fight for state constitutional amendments in all fifty states to guarantee the right to keep and bear arms. The amendments may not succeed everywhere, but in the states where they do, gun rights will be safe from the constant threat of infringement by a 5-4 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: For a history of the Incorporation Doctrine complete with detailed source notes and a bibliography, read "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing." It's published as an appendix to the novel, The 37th Amendment, and can be read online at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm.

You might also be interested in the 2006 America Wants To Know post, "The cat, the bag, and Justice Scalia."

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Tabloid update: "Clinton Heart Transplant"

2010-02-24T01:32:00.000-08:00

Just when the National Enquirer is accepted into the Pulitzer Prize competition for its John Edwards reporting and you start to think you can believe what you read in the tabloids, the Globe goes and splashes its front page with a headline screaming, "Clinton Heart Transplant!"

The story is completely bogus and we wouldn't even bother to tell you about it, except that you know as well as we do that you Googled for it and now you're here.

Welcome. We won't disappoint you.

"Frantic search for donor!" the cover announces, "Bill's secret battle to stay alive!"

As a matter of fact, there is a picture of Hillary Clinton inside with a rolled-up newspaper in her hands.

But it's nothing the Secret Service can't handle.

No, former President Clinton is not in need of a heart transplant. The Globe reports that he's told friends he's "terrified he has less than two years to live" unless he gets one, but the Globe says "it probably wouldn't solve his cardiovascular problems."

The president's doctors concur with the Globe.

President Clinton recently underwent a procedure to put stents in his arteries, and without getting into a lot of medical detail, there's nothing wrong with his heart.

Nothing that Mrs. Clinton can't fix with a rolled-up newspaper.

Still, the Globe reports that the former president has asked his aides to look into the possibility of a heart transplant, overseas if necessary.

"Bill has friends in high places all over the world and knows he can get a new heart," someone identified as a friend told the Globe, "Even though his wife Hillary and his doctors have all told him he doesn't need to take such a radical step, he won't give up."

Well, we feel for him. He's had a terrible scare. You see things in a hospital that make Stephen King look like Mother Goose.

Hang in there, Mr. President. Things wouldn't be the same around here without the Big Watermelon.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: Catch up on your tabloid reading with "Clinton! Parkinson's! Michelle! Baby Tragedy!" and "Clinton Only 1 Year to Live!"

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How John Galt could have helped Tiger Woods

2010-02-20T18:33:00.000-08:00

Tiger Woods made his first public appearance yesterday since the not-quite-Norman-Rockwell Thanksgiving that revealed all the trouble. It was painful to watch.

Using language of self-abasing humility, he proudly made it known that he employs a lot of people, creates a lot of wealth, and helps millions of children.

"To everyone involved in my foundation, including my staff, board of directors, sponsors, and most importantly, the young students we reach, our work is more important than ever," Woods said. "From the Learning Center students in Southern California to the Earl Woods scholars in Washington, D.C., millions of kids have changed their lives, and I am dedicated to making sure that continues."

The world's greatest golfer stood rigidly at the podium and spoke as if his neck was in a vise. "For all that I have done, I am so sorry," he said. "It's hard to admit that I need help, but I do."

He sure does.

He needs help from Ayn Rand.

"I stopped living by the core values that I was taught to believe in," Tiger said on Friday.

Did he?

"Altruism," Ayn Rand explained to Playboy magazine in 1964, "is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue."

The novelist and philosopher advocated a different moral system: "a nonmystical, nonaltruistic, rational code of ethics -- a morality which holds that man is not a sacrificial animal, that he has the right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others, nor others to himself."

This is an excerpt from the Playboy interview:

PLAYBOY: You are sharply critical of the world as you see it today, and your books offer radical proposals for changing not merely the shape of society, but the very way in which most men work, think and love. Are you optimistic about man's future?

RAND: Yes, I am optimistic....Look around you and look at history. You will see the achievements of man's mind. You will see man's unlimited potentiality for greatness, and the faculty that makes it possible. You will see that man is not a helpless monster by nature, but he becomes one when he discards that faculty: his mind. And if you ask me, what is greatness? -- I will answer, it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.

If John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand's 1957 masterwork, Atlas Shrugged, had visited Tiger Woods, he might have told the golfer that he has split himself in two: living by the values of reason, purpose and self-esteem in his professional life but abandoning those values in his personal life, with predictable results in both cases.

From the Playboy interview, this is Ayn Rand on the value of reason:

"Reason is man's tool of knowledge, the faculty that enables him to perceive the facts of reality. To act rationally means to act in accordance with the facts of reality. Emotions are not tools of cognition. What you feel tells you nothing about the facts; it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts. Emotions are the result of your value judgments; they are caused by your basic premises, which you may hold consciously or subconsciously, which may be right or wrong. A whim is an emotion whose cause you neither know nor care to discover. Now what does it mean, to act on whim? It means that a man acts like a zombie, without any knowledge of what he deals with, what he wants to accomplish, or what motivates him. It means that a man acts in a state of temporary insanity."

On the value of purpose:

"The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose -- a productive purpose....A central purpose serves to integrate all the other concerns of a man's life. It establishes the hierarchy, the relative importance, of his values, it saves him from pointless inner conflicts, it permits him to enjoy life on a wide scale and to carry that enjoyment into any area open to his mind; whereas a man without a purpose is lost in chaos. He does not know what his values are. He does not know how to judge. He cannot tell what is or is not important to him, and, therefore, he drifts helplessly at the mercy of any chance stimulus or any whim of the moment. He can enjoy nothing. He spends his life searching for some value which he will never find."

On the value of self-esteem [elaborating on her view that the kind of man who spends his time running after women is a man who "despises himself"]:

"This type of man is reversing cause and effect in regard to sex. Sex is an expression of a man's self-esteem, of his own self-value. But the man who does not value himself tries to reverse this process. He tries to derive his self-esteem from his sexual conquests, which cannot be done. He cannot acquire his own value from the number of women who regard him as valuable. Yet that is the hopeless thing which he attempts."

If Ayn Rand's hero had paid a visit to Tiger Woods, he might have explained to him that his accomplishments on the golf course were only possible because he used reason to assess the facts of reality and apply his rational mind to the challenges of the game, because it was his purpose to become the greatest golfer of all time, and because he regarded himself as equal to the task.

John Galt might have explained to Tiger that the failures in his personal life resulted from his attempt to fake reality and portray himself as a perfect, people-pleasing fantasy figure, when in fact he was unhappy and adrift, loathing himself for failing to live up to the fake reality he created.

John Galt might have advised Tiger to close his foundation, give up his endorsement deals, divorce his wife and get back on the golf course. "I am who I am," the script might have read. "It was a mistake to mislead you for the sake of selling products and funding scholarships."

The reaction to that speech might have been: "Don't close the foundation! We need you! We love you! All is forgiven!"

The truth would set him free.

Instead, he's going to attempt to regain the fake reality through a public display of therapy, religion, marriage counseling, and philanthropy.

"I ask you to find room in your heart to one day believe in me again," Tiger wept.

Believe -- the word itself tells you that he's faking it.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand has some interesting thoughts on what she called, "The Meaning of Sex":

"The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think -- for the same reason -- that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one's mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you -- just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself....

"Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives -- and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values -- and can be nothing else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws -- and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure. Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex -- nothing but shame...."

Ayn Rand diagnosed Tiger Woods pretty well, didn't she?

You should see what she says about Barack Obama.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: You might be interested in the previous post, "Decoding Don Draper."

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"Dead you know."

2010-02-17T18:33:00.000-08:00

"Did you hear this one," legendary comedian Stan Laurel wrote to a friend in 1963, "Two Englishmen: 'Heard you buried your wife last week.' 'Oh yes. Had to -- dead you know.'"

Not everyone is so matter-of-fact in the face of bad news.

"It can't be dead, it shouldn't be dead, and I'm presuming won't be dead," Democratic pollster and strategist Stanley Greenberg told an audience on Wednesday, speaking of the health care reform bill.

"No, no, it's resting, look!"

"Look my lad, I know a dead parrot when I see one and I'm looking at one right now."

"No, no sir, it's not dead. It's resting."

President Obama has invited congressional leaders of both parties to a televised health care summit on February 25. "Let's put the best ideas on the table," he said.

"Remarkable bird the Norwegian Blue, beautiful plumage, innit?"

"The plumage don't enter into it - it's stone dead."

"No, no - it's just resting."

Politico reported today that nine Democratic senators have signed a letter asking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "to bring the public option back up for a vote."

"It's bleeding demised."

"It's not, it's pining."

"It's not pining, it's passed on. This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot."

"The Senate has an obligation to reform our unworkable health insurance market -- both to reduce costs and to give consumers more choices," Colorado Democratic Senator Michael Bennet wrote in his letter to Majority Leader Reid, "A strong public option is the best way to deliver on both of these goals, and we urge its consideration under reconciliation rules."

'Reconciliation' is an arcane Senate procedure invented for passing budget bills without permitting filibusters. It can only be used to pass measures that relate directly to the federal budget. A provision requiring coverage for pre-existing conditions, for example, wouldn't qualify.

"A reconciliation bill won't work," Politico reported, quoting Lawrence O'Donnell, who was staff director of the Democratic Senate Finance Committee during the '93-'94 health care debate. "When people talk about its 51-vote threshold they're forgetting that is just the final vote. Every day the bill is on the floor it will face 60-vote procedural hurdles. For instance, should Republicans challenge a provision's inclusion and get a favorable ruling from the parliamentarian, without 60 votes, Democrats will be unable to overturn it – leading to a bill that looks more like Swiss cheese than health reform."

O'Donnell said the health care bill went into its "death throes" when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "We don't have the votes for passing the Senate bill."

"That should have just ended it," O'Donnell said. "Any discussion of another scenario is juvenile. It's ridiculous."

Since Election Night in Massachusetts, O'Donnell told Politico, Democrats have moved into "full bluff mode" in order to keep their liberal base from going "bonkers."

"If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies."

"We need to take our time" getting to a final health care bill, President Obama told donors and supporters of Organizing for America, his former campaign operation. He said a pause will allow "everybody to get the real facts."

We've got them, thanks.

"This is an ex-parrot!"

Copyright 2010

Source note: The Dead Parrot Sketch is of course from Monty Python's Flying Circus, available on DVD from Amazon.com.

Editor's note: You might be interested in the previous America Wants To Know posts on health care reform:

Insanity
Tom Daschle: Done
Step right up to see the Amazing Health Care Reform!
Just kill it
Gazing into the future
Bad at math
Yes we can and no we won't
The big half truth
The right to kill health care reform
The secret health plan
The midnight sausage factory
Why health care reform will fail
History, and history
Predicting slavery
Health Care Reform Dinner Theater
Punch Lines

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We turn casting director

2010-02-14T14:21:00.000-08:00

Ordinarily, America Wants To Know doesn't dabble in show business, but we would like to send an open letter to actor Jimmy Smits:

Cookie, baby, sweetheart, you've just got to buy the film rights to this guy's story:

That's Israeli cult leader Goel Ratzon. He's sitting in the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court, where he's in some trouble for having 21 wives.

Don't you love these Valentine's Day feature stories?

Goel Ratzon is facing charges of rape, sodomy, enslavement and sexual abuse within his family. He disputes the rape charge. "Stroking" minors does not constitute rape, he explained to the court.

It's nice that Bill Clinton's defense lawyers found work again.

According to the indictment, Goel Ratzon kept peace in the family with strict rules, enforced by financial penalties. The fine was 100 shekels for questioning another wife about her whereabouts, 2,000 shekels for catfights, and 200 shekels for "talking nonsense."

This story has blockbuster written all over it.

And don't miss the surprise ending, when Tiger Woods buys the Gaza Strip and converts to Judaism.

Copyright 2010

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Genius and courage

2010-01-31T20:12:00.000-08:00

If the framers of the United States Constitution could have lived to see the events of last week, they would be congratulating themselves on a job well done.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy led a 5-4 majority to rule in the case of Citizens United v. FEC that the First Amendment does not permit a law that criminalizes campaign ads paid for by corporations and similar groups.

Justice Kennedy wrote that the law in question, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the McCain-Feingold Act), was having a "chilling effect" on political speech. The law and the regulations following from it were so complex and uncertain, Justice Kennedy wrote, that they amounted to a prior restraint on speech. "A speaker wishing to avoid criminal liability threats and the heavy costs of defending against FEC enforcement must ask a governmental agency for prior permission to speak," he wrote, exactly the sort of government power "that the First Amendment was drawn to prohibit."

The people who currently hold government power reacted to this decision with extraordinary hostility.

"This week, the United States Supreme Court handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists – and a powerful blow to our efforts to rein in corporate influence," President Barack Obama intoned in his weekly radio/Internet address. "This ruling strikes at our democracy itself," he said, "I can't think of anything more devastating to the public interest."

Over in the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the decision will allow "special-interest dollars to dictate the details of public policy."

On the other side of the Capitol, Senator Chuck Schumer said he will hold hearings to look for a way to get around the Supreme Court's decision.

Speaker Pelosi said she's looking at "legislative options available to mitigate the impact of this disappointing decision."

And President Obama said he has "instructed" his administration "to develop a forceful, bipartisan response to this decision."

The president was so angry at the Supreme Court that he lashed out at the the justices during his State of the Union address, accusing them to their faces of believing that "American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities." He said he was "urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems." [That was milder than his written speech, which read, "to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."]

Of course, the First Amendment can't be overturned by an act of Congress.

It was the genius of the Founders to protect our liberty by dividing and limiting government power. "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition," they wrote in Federalist No. 51, which is titled "The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments."

It was published in 1788, but it's still in what book dealers call "very good" condition.

Federalist No. 51, written by Alexander Hamilton or James Madison, says the "preservation of liberty" requires that each branch of government "have a will of its own," with the members of each department having "as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others." The framers agreed to "some deviations" from this principle, one being the appointment and confirmation of judges. Because of "peculiar qualifications being essential in the members" of the judicial branch, the most important consideration was "to select that mode of choice which best secures these qualifications."

The safeguard of liberty was "the permanent tenure by which the appointments are held in that department, [which] must soon destroy all sense of dependence on the authority conferring them."

That's exactly what you saw on television during the State of the Union address: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and five of his colleagues calmly dismissing a presidential rebuke and the congressional standing ovation for it.

It's the framers' design. The Supreme Court doesn't answer to Congress or the president.

Still, it takes courage to stand up for the First Amendment in the face of withering criticism from those who find freedom of speech to be an obstacle to their plans.

"It will be that much harder to get fair, common-sense financial reforms, or close unwarranted tax loopholes that reward corporations from sheltering their income or shipping American jobs off-shore," President Obama seethed in his remarks about the Citizens United decision, "It will make it more difficult to pass commonsense laws to promote energy independence because even foreign entities would be allowed to mix in our elections. It would give the health insurance industry even more leverage to fend off reforms that would protect patients."

He's angry because the Supreme Court threw out a law that would have kept banks and insurance companies and oil companies and other corporations from running ads to give voters their side of the story when they are threatened and attacked by progressive politicians -- "men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims," in Ayn Rand's words.

Corporations are no longer disarmed in the 30 days before a primary election because Justice Anthony Kennedy took a courageous stand for freedom of speech, and not for the first time. In 2002 he led a 5-4 majority in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, striking down a law that banned "virtual" child pornography, computer-generated images created without real children.

The withering criticism of that decision came from the opposite side of the political spectrum.

Justice Anthony Kennedy deserves credit for defending freedom of speech without fear or favor.

Incidentally, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the 1990 decision that was overruled by Citizens United, is a good example of the trouble caused by the Incorporation Doctrine, the Supreme Court's 20th-century project of applying some parts of the Bill of Rights to the states. Prior to the invention of the Incorporation Doctrine, the state of Michigan would have had a perfect right to restrict freedom of speech.

That's because the Bill of Rights was intended to apply only to the federal government, not to the states.

It was 1925, in the case of Gitlow v. People of State of New York, when the Supreme Court first suggested that the U.S. Constitution required the states to guarantee freedom of speech and the press. As late as 1922 the Court held that the Constitution "imposes upon the States no obligation to confer...the right of free speech."

Over time, the Supreme Court developed its theory that certain rights are so fundamental to the concept of due process of law that they must apply to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, which bars any state from denying due process to any person.

It gets a little tricky when the Court tries to explain which rights are "fundamental" and which ones are not. It gets even trickier when the justices cut the states some slack and allow that there may be a "compelling state interest" justifying the law, and as long as it's "narrowly tailored" it's probably constitutional.

In the now overruled Austin case, the Supreme Court held that "Section 54(1) of the Michigan Campaign Finance Act," which prohibited corporations from using their general treasury funds for campaign ads, did not violate the First Amendment because there was a "compelling state interest" in "preventing corruption" and the law was "sufficiently narrowly tailored to achieve its goal."

When the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in the 2003 McConnell v. Federal Election Commission case, the Austin decision was cited as a precedent.

The made-up balancing tests that the Supreme Court uses to apply the First Amendment to the states -- fundamental rights, compelling state interests, narrowly tailored laws -- were being applied to a law made by Congress, even though the First Amendment says that when it comes to freedom of speech, "Congress shall make no law."

That's the muddle that has been made by the Supreme Court's ever-evolving and constitutionally unauthorized Incorporation Doctrine.

"The biggest stretch that the Court has made was interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment to apply the Bill of Rights to the states," Justice Antonin Scalia told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute in February, 2006. "Nobody ever thought the Bill of Rights applied to the states. It begins 'Congress shall make no law.'"

But Justice Scalia would rather not talk about it.

"I'm not about to tell the people of New York state or of any state that their state government is not bound by the First Amendment," he said. "Okay?"

He's not really asking.

If we were following the Constitution as written, Michigan could ban corporate spending on campaign ads, and New York could require terrorists to testify against themselves, and California could ban jury trials, and Alabama could segregate its public schools. That's our federal system, as written, and as it used to be before the Incorporation Doctrine.

We have spent the last 75 or so years allowing the Supreme Court's decisions to substitute for constitutional amendments. That's why you hear about "test cases" going to the Supreme Court instead of "ratification debates" going on in state legislatures.

It's a risky practice. We're always just a 5-4 decision away from somebody's freedom being overruled.

Constitutional rights are most secure when they're in the plain language of the Constitution.

And even then it takes a Herculean effort to keep them.

Thanks, Justice Kennedy.

Copyright 2010

Source note: The Ayn Rand quotation is from Atlas Shrugged; it can also be found in her book, For the New Intellectual, in "The Meaning of Money."

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "Rewriting the First Amendment." For more information and complete source notes on the history of the Incorporation Doctrine, read "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing," free online at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm and also published as the appendix to the novel, The 37th Amendment

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Janteenth

2010-01-19T17:33:00.000-08:00

Mark the day. January 19, 2010, is the day American taxpayers went to the polls and declared that they are not slaves to everybody else's needs.

It was October, 2007, when candidate Barack Obama told a small child in Durham, North Carolina, "We've got to make sure that people who have more money help the people who have less money."

That statement was at odds with the Constitution, which protects an individual's right to his own life, liberty and property. The U.S. government does not have the power or the responsibility to even out the distribution of wealth in the United States.

Now that Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown has defeated Democrat Martha Coakley for the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy, it's clear that the tea party protests in April and the town-hall meeting protests in August were not "Astroturf" demonstrations, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted again and again. They were the genuine article.

A lot of Americans don't want the government ramming through new entitlement programs and running up record-breaking debt; and then lecturing the country about shared responsibility, otherwise known as higher taxes and mandatory payments.

Freedom means the right to enjoy the fruits of your own efforts, what Abraham Lincoln called the right to eat the bread earned with one's own hands.

That's not going to change.

Copyright 2010

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Tabloid update: Exploding marriages

2010-01-17T09:47:00.000-08:00

"Obama Marriage Explodes!" the National Enquirer headlined on an April 2008 cover, but at the time there was nothing inside the magazine to back it up. The story was about Michelle Obama's fears that there might be photos and love notes from women in her husband's past that could create a huge embarrassment for them just before the election.

Senator Obama reportedly told his wife that there were no love notes and no photos.

That was all there was to the story, but to a casual observer in the supermarket checkout line, the cover gave the impression of a full-blown Clinton-style scandal.

At the time, America Wants To Know speculated that the Clintons were behind the story, possibly planting it through their attorney, David E. Kendall, who had represented the National Enquirer for fifteen years.

We would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Mr. Kendall and to take another guess.

Recently we were reading up on the latest revelations about former senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards, not in the Enquirer -- we're getting to that -- but in New York magazine, excerpted from the new book "Game Change" by political reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin:

Roger Altman picked up the phone in his 38th-floor office on the East Side of New York and found Edwards on the line. Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and a supporter of Hillary’s, was chairman of the investment group Evercore Partners. Since 1999, Evercore had owned a stake in American Media, the publisher of the National Enquirer--and it was that connection which prompted the call that day in the first week of October [2007].

There was no reason for the Clintons to pay David Kendall's hourly rate when they could just pick up the phone and call Roger Altman.

So we stand by the guess that at a critical point in the 2008 primaries, the Clintons fed a phony story to the National Enquirer, trying to neutralize the infidelity issue by making voters think the Obama marriage was no different than theirs.

Or maybe everybody was just psychic.

Because last week the Globe headlined its cover, "Obama Marriage Explodes!" and this time it appears to be true.

Back to that in a minute.

The reason John Edwards called Roger Altman on that October day was to beg him to stop an upcoming story in the National Enquirer. The story was going to allege that he had an affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter. Edwards told Altman the story was outrageous and untrue.

It was all true.

Roger Altman told Edwards he didn't think he could do much about it, but he would call the publisher and talk to him.

Which he did.

But it was all true and the publisher had the evidence.

Then Elizabeth Edwards called Altman. "You must do something about this, she begged," according to Heilemann and Halperin. "It's cruel, it's unfair, and it's untrue. This is way too much for me. I can't take it. It's killing our family. It's killing me."

That was the strongest card she could play but it wasn't enough to stop the National Enquirer from exposing the whole sordid story of presidential candidate John Edwards recklessly cheating on his cancer-stricken wife with a woman his aides considered a dangerous bimbo groupie.

Edwards denied the story and denounced the Enquirer as trash, which the editors didn't appreciate. They ran a follow-up story in December showing Rielle Hunter six months pregnant.

Yet Elizabeth Edwards didn't walk out on the marriage. Instead she helped to develop a damage-control strategy and continued to help her husband run for the Democratic nomination for president in Iowa. Aghast at these developments, top staffers quietly plotted to leak the whole story to the New York Times and destroy the campaign in case Edwards somehow pulled out a victory in Iowa.

But Barack Obama won Iowa and John Edwards began an effort to sell his endorsement to the highest bidder in exchange for the VP nod, or the job of Attorney General, or something appropriate to his standing in the party.

Edwards was still holding out for a deal in February, when Rielle Hunter's baby was born, and in May, when Hillary Clinton won the West Virginia primary. It was then that Obama called Edwards and offered him a prime-time speaking slot at the convention, and for that, Edwards endorsed him.

Then in July, the National Enquirer staked out a Beverly Hills hotel and caught John Edwards meeting Rielle Hunter and their baby.

Edwards decided to appear on ABC's Nightline and semi-confess to infidelity without admitting paternity, which just made everything worse. The invitation to speak at the convention was withdrawn.

"Game Change" details the screaming arguments between John and Elizabeth Edwards as well as the couple's grandiose and abusive treatment of the campaign staff.

John Edwards was very nearly elected vice president in 2004, and there was a moment in time when he looked like he might become the Democratic nominee for president in 2008.

According to "Game Change," that's the precise moment when senior Senate Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urged freshman Senator Barack Obama to run for president.

"Edwards was regarded almost universally by his former colleagues as a callow, shallow phony," the authors write.

Former colleagues certainly didn't rush to defend him this week when the National Enquirer hit the newsstands with its cover story, "John Edwards Caught Cheating AGAIN!"

But this time it's different. "Humiliated wife finally kicks him out," the cover promises. The story says Mrs. Edwards threw her husband out of the house after Christmas, screaming that she was finally going to sign the divorce papers that have been gathering dust since her lawyers drew them up last year.

"The Enquirer has learned exclusively that the philandering ex-senator embarked on a 'sex-and-booze bender' after what appeared to be a marriage-ending blowout fight," the tabloid reports.

John Edwards reportedly moved to the couple's vacation home on Figure Eight Island near Wilmington, North Carolina, where he crawled the local bars every night, hitting on female employees and customers. Bartender Stephanie Breshears said Edwards tried on "four consecutive nights" to get her to go home with him after her shift at the Kornerstone Bistro.

"I think he's scum," Ms. Breshears told the Enquirer.

Now THAT'S the kind of judgment we've been looking for in a president. Why don't people like this ever run for office? We'll come back to that.

But first, the Obamas' exploding marriage.

America Wants To Know suspected that the president was cheating on his wife when we saw the Secret Service's odd reaction to the gate-crashers at the state dinner for the prime minister of India.

We also thought it was a bit odd that the president's aides waited three hours to tell him that a suspected terrorist tried to blow up a plane over Detroit with an underwear bomb on Christmas Day. Three hours? Imagine for a moment that you worked for the president. Under what circumstances would you just not disturb him?

That's what we thought, too.

Three hours is about right.

The Globe says the president's marriage "has been pushed to the brink of destruction by the intense pressure of White House living. That's the word from stunned insiders who say the First Couple is fighting tooth and claw behind closed doors and their 17-year union is edging ever closer to a shocking final meltdown."

The Globe's sources say "their marriage has been like a war zone." They're "screaming at each other" and "glaring" and "stomping off in different directions."

President and Mrs. Obama were trying to patch up their marriage with the Hawaiian vacation, the tabloid says, renting a $9 million ocean-front house along with two neighboring houses for friends who joined them on the trip.

"The whole holiday was a disaster," a source tells the tabloid, "They got into a huge fight the second they were on the island."

Some of the Globe's details are corroborated by mainstream press reports. The Obamas didn't go to church on Christmas and the couple didn't exchange gifts. That's in the Globe and also in the Washington Post.

"Barack can't believe how much Michelle has been spending since she became First Lady," the Globe reports. The spending, if not the disbelief, is corroborated by the NBC TV station in Dallas with a slideshow of Mrs. Obama's designer clothes, including a pair of black flats by Maison Martin Margiela that retail for $640 (but can be had for less):

Reporters on the Honolulu trip also took note of Mrs. Obama's absence from the group of eighteen friends and family members who accompanied the president on a trip to buy shave ice, otherwise known as snow cones, on New Year's Day. "First Lady Michelle Obama didn’t make the outing," ABC News volunteered.

It doesn't prove anything.

But there have been signs of stress. There was that we-just-had-a-fight body language when the first couple arrived at the Blue Duck Tavern in Washington for an anniversary dinner last October:

And when they left:

And there were those odd comments Mrs. Obama made to a New York Times magazine reporter about "bumps" in their marriage with the president "studying the carpet as she answered."

And just this weekend the president surprised his wife with a birthday dinner at a local restaurant. The guest list included the first lady's mom, her chief of staff, presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett, two friends from Chicago, Attorney General Eric Holder and his wife.

As comedian Argus Hamilton would say, just the two of them and their food tasters.

We don't know whether Michelle Obama is the type of person who would stay or leave if her husband was revealed to be a faithless philandering egomaniac. She might be Elin Woods, packed and out of there, or she might be Hillary Clinton, staying in it for the power and the glory and the salaried make-up and hair stylists.

What we do know is that too many of our presidential candidates fit the description in "Game Change" of John Edwards' implosion: "an archetypal political tragedy in which the very same qualities that fuel any presidential bid--ego, hubris, vanity, neediness, a kind of delusion--became all-consuming and self-destructive."

Ego, hubris, vanity, neediness, a kind of delusion. The qualities that fuel any presidential bid.

This is really dangerous.

Is it an unintended consequence of thirty years of campaign finance reform?

Not so very long ago, a small group of people could donate a large amount of money and finance the candidacy of a person they believed would make a good president, or senator, or congressman.

No more.

Now a candidate has to be willing to spend two or even three years raising small donations and shaking every hand in Iowa and New Hampshire. Now a candidate has to be the kind of person who is so driven to be famous and powerful that no indignity is too great. Instead of thoughtful and accomplished candidates who do not wish to be publicly humiliated, we've got candidates who only went into politics because their parents stopped them from running away to join the circus.

Quick, guess how many recent presidential candidates have had issues with their fathers and are desperate to prove their success in a poignant and futile effort to win their father's approval.

Did you guess ALL of them?

Maybe we should take another look at those campaign finance laws. They were based on the belief that large donations were corrupting, but there must be a better way to keep corruption out than to make our candidates run a two-year obstacle course that no completely sane person could possibly tolerate.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "The case for adultery," "Hillary's shocking secret illness!" "Political marriages on the rocks," "Obama marriage explodes!" and "The strange but true source of extreme partisanship."

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Jay Leno's winning hand

2010-01-13T18:54:00.000-08:00

Do you remember where you were on that autumn day in 2004 when you heard the shocking news that NBC was going to replace Jay Leno with Conan O'Brien in five years?

It was shocking because the Tonight Show host had just signed a new contract, because he was number one in the ratings, and because nobody gets five years' notice that they're going to be fired.

Even in a business that competes to deliver ever-younger and more gullible audiences to advertisers, it was shocking that NBC would openly insult Jay Leno's viewers by publicly declaring that they were old and unwanted.

Jay Leno's old and unwanted audience was still delivering top ratings and profits for NBC when the clock ticked to the doomsday moment, and suddenly the decrepit old viewers of 2004 looked like a potential ratings smash for a rival network, a nuclear weapon that ABC or Fox could use to blow up Conan O'Brien.

And so the very best minds in the very worst business reached a wildly extravagant and screw-proof deal for Jay Leno to stay at NBC.

If he succeeded at 10 p.m., terrific. If he didn't, they knew a secret that would allow them to push Conan out of the way and put everything back as it was before.

NBC's agreement with its affiliates allows it to start the Tonight Show as late as 12:05 a.m. to allow for those occasional half-hour special reports on tennis championships, or the Olympics, or similar big events.

And now there are reports that Conan O'Brien's contract doesn't actually specify or guarantee the Tonight Show's time slot.

So NBC is able to avoid a huge contractual penalty payment to Conan O'Brien by moving the Tonight Show out of the Tonight Show's historic time slot instead of canceling it or firing him, and perhaps they could even sue him for breach of contract if he leaves the network. Conan's management team didn't see it coming when they negotiated his NBC contract six years ago.

Conan told his viewers he won't do the Tonight Show at 12:05 a.m. and he accused the network of trying to dismantle the great Tonight Show franchise. He complained that he was not given as much time as his predecessor -- only seven months -- to develop the formerly number-one show into a ratings success.

Now Jay Leno is being blamed for undercutting Conan O'Brien by staying at NBC, by delivering weak prime-time ratings that allegedly hurt the late-night schedule, and by agreeing to move back into the 11:35 p.m. time slot.

But the larger story here is the shattered myth of the all-powerful youth audience. Back in 2004, NBC executives were terrified that Conan O'Brien would go to another network and take the future of television with him. They had no confidence that Jay Leno could hold on to younger viewers. They made a bet that in five years, the decision to replace Jay with Conan would look like a stroke of genius.

Not quite.

Maybe someday, someone will bet against the Baby Boom and win.

Don't bet on it.

Copyright 2010

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Punch lines

2010-01-10T10:00:00.000-08:00

So there's this very old joke about a Beverly Hills gynecologist who is seeing a new patient, a 67-year-old married woman, and he is startled to discover that she is still a virgin.

Without dragging out the story, the essence of it is that there's no medical, psychological or educational problem, it's simply that she's been married for 42 years and is still a virgin.

The doctor asks her why.

"Well, doctor, it's like this," the woman explains. "My husband is a William Morris agent. Every night he sits on the edge of the bed and tells me all the wonderful things he's going to do for me."

Does anything about that joke remind you of the health care bill?

On Saturday, President Barack Obama used his weekly radio address to claim that health care reform will create "good, lasting jobs" and "shared prosperity."

He claimed that it will offer the security of "quality, affordable health care" even if "you lose your job, change jobs, move or get sick."

He claimed that "costs will finally come down for families, businesses, and our government."

Then he said this: "Here's what else will happen within the first year. Insurance plans will be required to offer free preventive care to their customers - so that we can start catching preventable illnesses and diseases on the front end."

That's the point where his argument went from absurdly comical to pie-throwing hilarious.

There's no such thing as "free preventive care." Somebody's going to pay for it, unless the president plans to propose the repeal of the Thirteenth Amendment so he can enslave medical professionals.

Whenever the government requires insurance plans to pay for something extra, the premiums go up to reflect the additional cost of the services.

America Wants To Know is self-employed and pays for an individual Blue Cross policy which goes up in price every single time the state or federal government mandates a new benefit. Remember the extra night in the hospital for new mothers? Premiums went up. Remember the last-minute addition to the October 2008 bailout bill, mandating coverage for mental health problems? Premiums jumped more than 30 percent the following January.

Nothing is free.

We're going to pay for it as policyholders, or we're going to pay for it as taxpayers, or we're going to pay for it in long waits and limited services caused by price controls. Or all three.

If the final health care bill really contains a provision requiring insurance plans to offer "free" preventive care, hundreds of millions of Americans are going to see their premiums and other co-payments rise to cover that extra cost. While that has happened many times before, this will be the first time that Americans can put all the blame on their elected officials.

And they will.

No joke.

There's something Shakespearean about the way the Democrats are barreling ahead to pass a health care bill before the voters can get to the polls to stop them. They're marching to their own tragic fate, unable to alter their course, doomed to fulfill the awful prophecy now revealed to have been their death sentence: Change.

Maybe it's not Shakespeare as much as it is Rod Serling.

("Mr. Chambers! Don't get on that ship! The rest of the book, 'To Serve Man,' it's... it's a COOKBOOK!")

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Insanity," "Bad at math," "The midnight sausage factory," "Why health care reform will fail," and "Health Care Reform Dinner Theatre."

Source note: The quotation is from the 1962 Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man." Read more at The Internet Movie Database, IMDB.com.

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Tabloid update: "Found! Bush Love Letters to Condi"

2010-01-08T17:14:00.000-08:00

Last week's Globe tabloid featured a "world exclusive" cover story promising proof that they've been right all along about former President George W. Bush's marriage-shattering affair with his Secretary of State and former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

While we don't doubt that they've been right all along, this story doesn't prove it.

"Intimate love notes George Bush sent to his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been found in a stash of missing White House e-mails," the Globe reports, "insiders believe."

It's true that a stash of missing White House e-mails have been found. On December 15, 2009, the Associated Press reported that computer technicians located 22 million missing White House e-mail messages from 94 days of the Bush administration. The AP got this information from two groups that filed lawsuits over the Bush White House's faulty electronic record-keeping system.

The two groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive, said they're settling the lawsuits, which were filed in 2007.

But the e-mails haven't been made public. "It will be 2014 at the earliest before the public sees any of the messages because they must go through the National Archives' process for releasing presidential and agency records," the AP reports.

Nobody talking to the Globe claims to have seen the e-mails personally, but "a pal of the ex-Commander-in-Chief" told the Globe, "George is absolutely panicking" because "he has confided there were a series of e-mails between Condi and him during that time frame that should never see the light of day - NEVER."

The time frame in question is between March 2003 and October 2005, "when sources say the Bush marriage was already strained," the tabloid reports.

"He says during his lowest times he reached out to Condi and talked in detail about his loveless marriage to Laura - and once he even told Condi he wanted her by his side," the Globe's insider reveals.

America Wants To Know is a little skeptical.

According to published reports, President Bush stopped using e-mail when he left Texas and moved into the White House.

In June, 2008, former deputy associate director of the White House Communications Office Jaime Sneider wrote in The Weekly Standard, "George W. Bush told a small group of friends just days before being sworn in, 'Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace.' In the last eight years, President Bush has not sent a single message. And future presidents are all but certain to follow in his footsteps."

It's just not plausible that President Bush sent embarrassing love notes through the White House e-mail system.

Does that mean the Globe is one hundred percent wrong?

America Wants To Know doesn't think so.

If President Bush wrote embarrassing love notes to Condoleezza Rice, there's at least one person who would have copies of them.

Condoleezza Rice.

She's writing a book, you know. The Associated Press reported last February that Crown Publishers, a division of Random House Inc., will pay her $2.5 million to write three books, starting with "a memoir about her years in the administration of President George W. Bush," due out in 2011. "Rice will combine candid narrative and acute analysis to tell the story of her time in the White House," Crown's press release promised.

Could she be the source for this story? Is she the "pal of the ex-Commander-in-Chief" who talked to the tabloid?

It's not impossible.

Previous stories in the Globe have featured photos of former first lady Laura Bush looking glamorous and lovely, but this one has just one small photo of Mrs. Bush, and she looks like a witch.

The former president, who in the past has been pictured in the Globe looking like a wreck, looks impish and cute in this issue. There are four photos of Mr. Bush and Dr. Rice looking affectionate, two in which he's kissing her cheek, one that shows his arm around her shoulder as they both wave to cameras, and the cover photo, which shows them exchanging knowing looks as if they share an amusing secret.

Even if the former Secretary of State is not the source for the Globe's story, it's plausible that former President Bush is panicked over what might come out in her book, or in the book his wife Laura is writing. A year ago the New York Times reported that Mrs. Bush signed with Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, to write a memoir which will be published this year.

Scribner said the book will offer "an intimate account of Mrs. Bush's life experiences."

So, this much of the Globe's story we can be sure is true: the former president is panicked. With two women in his life writing a "candid narrative" and an "intimate account," any husband would be.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: Catch up on your tabloid reading with "Suicidal Bush in Therapy!" and "Laura Gets $15M Divorce Pay Off!"

This is serious

2009-12-31T16:51:00.000-08:00

Two travel bloggers in the United States of America were visited by special agents of the Transportation Security Administration Tuesday night and served with subpoenas demanding to know who gave them a Christmas Day TSA memo about changes in airport security procedures.

"YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED BY THE ADMINISTRATOR," the subpoena begins. It demanded a response by December 31.

On December 31, the TSA backed off its deadline and gave one of the writers until January 20 to respond or challenge the subpoena in federal court.

The other writer wasn't given more time because he had already surrendered his laptop computer to the federal agents. Steve Frischling was visited at his Connecticut home for several hours on Tuesday night, and the agents returned for another visit Wednesday morning.

"Frischling said the agents threatened to interfere with his contract to write a blog for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines if he didn't cooperate and provide the name of the person who leaked the memo," the Associated Press reported.

Under that threat, Steve Frischling gave the federal agents his laptop computer.

Do you understand how serious this is?

The United States government threatened to interfere with a citizen's employment in order to intimidate him.

The subpoena served by the TSA agents was not signed by a judge. "The administrative subpoena — a demand for information issued without a judge's approval — is a civil, not a criminal document. If Elliott refuses to comply, the TSA could ask a judge to hold the writer in contempt," the AP explains.

The distinction between civil and criminal penalties may not have been made clear to Chris Elliot and Steve Frischling when federal agents knocked on the doors of their homes Tuesday night. Chris Elliot called a lawyer, and Steve Frischling was intimidated into surrendering his computer.

Under the law, ill-considered as it may be, the TSA has the authority to issue an administrative subpoena. But nowhere in the law is the TSA authorized to threaten a citizen with the loss of employment.

Which part of the Constitution does this violate most egregiously? The First Amendment right of free speech? The Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures? The Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination? The guarantee of due process of law and the equal protection of the laws? The Ninth Amendment guarantee that citizens have additional rights even if they're not specifically enumerated in the Constitution? The Tenth Amendment guarantee that the federal government has only the powers delegated to it by the Constitution, and all other powers remain with the states or the people?

Everything in the Constitution prohibits the government from using its power in this way.

In Iraq, where the government owns all the major industries and nearly everybody works for the government, this kind of intimidation is built into the daily lives of Iraqi citizens.

In the United States, it should never, ever happen.

Whoever came up with the idea of threatening Steve Frischling with the loss of his contract to write a blog for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines should resign or be fired immediately, and so should everyone who signed off on that idea, and so should the agents who delivered that threat.

All year long we've watched as the government threatened auto executives and bank executives and insurance company executives with the loss of their livelihoods if they didn't go along with the administration's directives.

Now the government is coming in the night to knock on the doors of citizens' homes and threaten them with documents that say "YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED."

It is worth mentioning that these writers were subjected to this treatment because they published something. Not because they are suspected of breaking any law. Not because they had information about an imminent threat to anyone's safety.

The United States is not automatically a free country because we shoot off fireworks on the Fourth of July.

We have to work at this.

Call your congressman and your senators. Tell them you want the federal government to stop governing through intimidation. Tell them you expect the federal government to protect your freedom, not to trample on it.

U.S. House of Representatives main switchboard: 202-224-3121. Click here to find contact information for your representative.

U.S. Senate main switchboard: 202-225-3121. Click here to find contact information for your senators.

Copyright 2009

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Going down

2009-12-28T17:18:00.000-08:00

If you were President of the United States and your poll numbers were heading toward the earth's core, how would you celebrate Christmas?

Would you dress up your beautiful family and go to church? Would you tell reporters cute stories about the kids opening their presents on Christmas morning as you and your wife looked on with pride and love? Would you go to a homeless shelter or hospital and help serve Christmas dinner?

That's not how President Obama did it.

"The president and his wife, Michelle, started their day at 6:40 a.m. by going to the gym -- a feat unimaginable to most parents of young children eager to open presents on Christmas morning," the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

If you were president, would you give your wife a beautiful gift that would make all the married female voters in America think you're a wonderful husband?

"The first couple did not swap presents," White House aides told the Post, "and the Obamas did not attend church services, instead spending the day at the oceanfront home they are renting in Kailua, on the island of Oahu."

Later in the day, the Obama children opened presents with their cousins, the Post reported.

President Obama is tenaciously pursuing an unpopular agenda, and he does himself no favors by missing the easy lay-ups.

A week from now, when pollsters call people at dinner time and ask if they approve or disapprove of President Obama, no one will attribute the drop in popularity to the president's decision to skip church services and family gift-giving in favor of working out and playing golf. There will be so many other things to blame by then.

But keep an eye on the answers to questions like "Does President Obama share your values?" and "Do you trust President Obama to pursue the right policies for our country?"

That's where the Ghost of Christmas Past will rattle his chains.

Copyright 2009

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Cracking the e-books

2009-12-27T01:56:00.000-08:00

It can take years to write a book but it takes only a week to read one, so the question a writer is asked most often is probably, "When's your next book coming out?"

Recently there has been an even more annoying question, if that's possible.

"When's your book coming out as an e-book?"

The reason that's an annoying question is that it takes longer to read this sentence than it takes to download an entire book from an overseas file-sharing site that is conveniently making e-books available at absolutely no cost whatsoever.

E-books are making suckers out of authors and publishers, who are currently on the phone screaming at each other over how to divide the royalties from e-book sales.

E-books are also making suckers out of consumers who pay hundreds of dollars for the latest e-book reading devices. Hackers cracked the proprietary code of Amazon's Kindle before the Christmas trees were even up and e-books are now available in the ubiquitous PDF format that can be read on any computer running Adobe's Acrobat Reader.

Which is a free program, by the way.

So in about twenty seconds you can find and download the brand-new book of your choice. And don't worry, there are no security cameras or mall cops to catch you.

Don't be afraid that this is too technical or difficult. Let's try it together. What should we steal? How about Sarah Palin's new book?

First, we'll go to Google and search for "Rapidshare" (that's a file-sharing site "in another land," as comedian Robert Klein used to say) and the title of Governor Palin's book, "Going Rogue."

Why, look at that, we can steal the audio book, too. Isn't that nice. So convenient.

But for now, let's just click on the second search result, fileshunt.com/rapidshare.php?file=going+rogue.

Well, that didn't take long. Here are four different links to take us to free pirated copies of Governor Palin's book. Good thing she didn't spend six years writing it or she'd really be aggravated. Let's click the "trusted download." As Senator McCain can attest, it's best to deal with someone who's been fully vetted.

This link has brought us to download-zzz.com, where we can see that the book is available in an assortment of formats. Number seven on the list is in PDF format, which any computer running Adobe Acrobat Reader can open with a single click of a mouse.

It's easy to print, too, in case you're one of those people who doesn't like to read on a screen.

Of course, then you'd have to pay for paper and toner. Unless you're at work. Hey, why not, you're done with your Internet shopping, right?

Okay, let's click on the PDF link and see what happens.

Here the web site asks us to select our country from a list. Is that because the laws in some places don't allow us to steal Governor Palin's book? Don't be silly. They just want to give us better service. "Choosing the download server closest to you will result in faster download speeds," the web site helpfully explains.

Isn't that nice? Don't you feel like an idiot for buying a Kindle?

Now let's click the download button and see if we have pulled this off successfully.

Uh-oh! We got a warning! Let's see what it says.

"In order to download this file you have to be registered and logged in. If you have NOT registered yet, click 'Register' and follow the easy steps. Creating an account is free, easy and only takes seconds."

So, have we hit the security barrier? Is this where we have to put in our real name, credit card number, verified PayPal address?

Don't be silly.

All they want is your e-mail address. They promise to protect your information ("Download-zzz.com never releases e-mail addresses to third parties for any reason whatsoever and your personal information will be securely stored in accordance with our privacy policy") but if for any reason you're worried that they can't be trusted, just go over to Yahoo or Google or AOL and sign up for a free e-mail account. Use a fake name. What, is this your first robbery? You don't know this stuff already?

You can see that you're required to check the box next to the words "I have carefully read and agree to the Terms and Conditions." Be sure to click the link and read those terms and conditions. That's where it will tell you that you may not use this file-sharing service for the purpose of stealing copyrighted material. And the next time you park your car next to a broken parking meter, be sure to put money in it anyway.

Hey, what's THIS? They want us to pay a membership fee? That is SO not going to happen. If we didn't pay the author and we didn't pay the publisher and we didn't pay for the Kindle we're certainly not going to pay YOU, pal.

These people have a lot of nerve, asking us to pay $1.95 for membership (marked down from $39.85, which apparently they had no luck collecting).

Download-zzz.com offers testimonials from satisfied customers to help convince visitors to part with two dollars for their service. Here's one:

"I have found Download ZZZ to not only be helpful in getting the freshest media content and software versions, but also reliable and fast," writes the happy customer. "In today's market, such service is a really rare example of quality. Customer support is very good as well: quick answers and quick results for me. And I got all of this at a very reasonable and fair price."

Look, it's only two dollars, and people are entitled to be paid for their work, right?

Just kidding.

You can go back to Google and search "Rapidshare" and "Going Rogue" and "FREE download," and this time don't fall for that "trusted download" scam.

This is all just another way of saying that the authors who are calling their publishers to demand a share of e-book revenue are never going to recoup the cost of the long-distance phone call. That is, if they pay for long-distance phone calls. You can call on the Internet for free, but some authors still use typewriters.

America Wants To Know started a small publishing company this year and is currently writing a series of slightly twisted detective novels which have been and continue to be one hell of a lot of work.

When's the next book coming out?

Aiming for the fall of 2010.

When's the book coming out as an e-book?

Sometime after Sarah Palin is elected president. Look for it midway through her third term.

Copyright 2009

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