Fighting for the People. . .of Afghanistan?

Fighting for the People . . . of Afghanistan?

WASHINGTON, September 23, 2009–In a recent statement by top U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, he criticized the U.S. military for being “preoccupied with protection of our own forces” in Afghanistan. He wrote that American forces should “share risk, at least equally, with the people” of Afghanistan. What makes our leaders think that they can ever win a war with this sort of philosophy?

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

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Is ‘Obamacare’ the Only Option?

Alternative ideas for health care reform abound; why no coverage of them?

We are hearing a lot about the Democrats’ health care reform plan(s), which consists of a full-blown government takeover of the industry, but what about other proposals? Other than bromides like “the party of no” and “Republicans have no solutions”, you don’t hear anything about the suggestions made by Republicans and non-partisan think tanks. Is Obamacare really the only game in town? Or is this just another example of the mainstream media being in the tank for the administration? I’ve been doing some research and was surprised to learn there are other proposals out there.

One proposal comes from the Republican Study Committee, the Empowering Patients First Act, HR 3400. Let’s take a look:
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Obama’s Health Care Deception

Obama’s Health Care Deception

Washington, D.C., August 11, 2009–President Obama has recently gone on record saying that his health care reforms “will keep government out of health care decisions,” that they will enable individuals to keep their current plans, and that they will be “deficit neutral.”

“But,” says Jeff Scialabba, a writer with the Ayn Rand Center, “the President’s eight ‘health insurance consumer protections’ demonstrate the contradictions inherent in these claims. The protections are effectively eight mandates that the President intends to place on insurance companies. These mandates would, among others, prohibit them from pricing their plans according to the health risks of the consumers purchasing them, prohibit them from limiting the amount of coverage a customer receives, require that they pay in full for preventive care, and require that they renew plans in perpetuity.

“Are we really expected to believe that a whole series of new mandates forcing insurance companies to absorb additional costs while preventing them from making up the losses elsewhere will have no effect on current plans–or that this does not constitute government involvement in health care decisions? The only certainty is that Obama’s mandates will affect everyone–even those who like their current insurance plan. Cumulatively, we’ll be worse off for it.”

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A "Uniquely American" Health Care Plan

A “Uniquely American” Health Care Plan

Washington, D.C., August 7, 2009—President Obama, in an effort to sell his socialized health care plan, has said that what America needs is not a free market in health care, but a “uniquely American” government-controlled system. But what would such a plan really look like?

Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu owner speaks out

My name is George C. Joseph. I am the sole owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu, a family owned and operated business in Melbourne, Florida. My family bought and paid for this automobile franchise 35 years ago in 1974. I am the second generation to manage this business.

We currently employ 50+ people and before the economic slowdown we employed over 70 local people. We are active in the community and the local chamber of commerce. We deal with several dozen local vendors on a day to day basis and many more during a month. All depend on our business for part of their livelihood. We are financially strong with great respect in the market place and community. We have strong local presence and stability.
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Obama Evades Government’s Role in the Crisis

Obama Evades Government’s Role in the Crisis

Washington, D.C., April 10, 2009–In an op-ed published this week by Canada’s Financial Post, Alex Epstein, analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, argued that “In calling for a massive increase in government control over the economy,” Obama “has evaded the mountain of evidence implicating the government.”
 
The primary cause of the current crisis, explained Mr. Epstein, was “drastic attempts by the government to control the housing and financial markets–via a Federal Reserve that cut interest rates to all-time lows, and via a gigantic increase in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s size and influence.” Through these entities, Epstein pointed out, “the government sought to ‘stimulate the economy’ and promote homeownership by artificially extending cheap credit to home-buyers.”
 
But, Mr. Epstein noted, Obama did not mention the Fed, Fannie, or Freddie even once, during his recent 52-minute speech to Congress. “Not once did he suggest that government manipulation of markets could have any possible role in the present crisis. He just went full steam ahead and called for more spending, more intervention, and more government housing programs as the solution.”
 
But the “fundamental solution to our problems,” said Epstein, is “to disentangle the government from the markets to prevent future manipulation.” To achieve that, Epstein concluded, we need to consider “pro-free-market remedies such as letting banks foreclose, letting prices reach market levels, letting bad banks fail, dismantling Fannie and Freddie, ending bailout promises, and getting rid of the Fed’s power to manipulate interest rates.”

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Misrepresenting "How We Arrived at This Moment"

By Alex Epstein

What must be done to recover from this financial crisis? Barack Obama rightly stresses that we first must understand how today’s problems emerged. It is “only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we’ll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament.”

Unfortunately, Obama (along with most of the Washington establishment) has created only misunderstanding. In calling for a massive increase in government control over the economy, he has evaded the mountain of evidence implicating the government.

For example, Obama’s core explanation of all the destructive behavior leading up to today’s crisis is that the market was too free. But the market that led to today’s crisis was systematically manipulated by government. Fact: this decade saw drastic attempts by the government to control the housing and financial markets–via a Federal Reserve that cut interest rates to all-time lows, and via a gigantic increase in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s size and influence. Fact: through these entities, the government sought to “stimulate the economy” and promote homeownership (sound familiar?) by artificially extending cheap credit to home-buyers. Fact: most of the (very few) economists who actually predicted the financial crisis blame Fed policy or housing policy for inflating a bubble that was bound to collapse.
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Obama Whitewashes Iran

Obama Whitewashes Iran

By Elan Journo
 
In his address to the joint session of Congress, President Obama said that “We cannot shun the negotiating table” in conducting our foreign policy. He’s previously elaborated that “if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.” And Iran’s president Ahmedinijad tentatively welcomes “talks based on mutual respect and in a fair atmosphere.”
 
The shared idea, evidently, is that our conflict with Iran stems largely from a past failure to use so-called diplomacy to settle disputes. Alluding to George W. Bush’s supposedly tough policy, Obama has said he wants to restore “the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years” ago.
 
Really? Thirty years ago this November, followers of Ayatollah Khomeini, who spearheaded Iran’s Islamic revolution, stormed the U.S. embassy in Teheran and took the personnel hostage. President Carter gently admonished Iran, but ruled out military retaliation. Instead his advisors spent months dreaming up schemes to bribe Iran into releasing the hostages–while bending over backward to enable the regime to save face. In the end Khomeini’s Islamist theocracy collected a handsome payoff for its aggression, and concluded, rightly, that if attacked, America would crumple to its knees.
 
Was Obama thinking of the 1980s? In April 1983 Iran’s jihadist proxies in Lebanon rammed a truck bomb into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut; the Reagan administration responded by doing nothing. Months later, encouraged by Washington’s inaction, Teheran issued a kill order–via its ambassador in Syria–to its allied groups in Beirut. Early one morning, an Islamist suicide bomber set off a massive explosion at the barracks where U.S. marines were sleeping and killed 241 of them.
 
Reagan spouted hot air about not backing down–and soon after ordered the U.S. troops to bug out. The jihadists wanted America out, they slaughtered our troops, and we caved in and gave them what they wanted.
 
Osama bin Laden, like jihadists in Iran and elsewhere, viewed our response to the Beirut bombings as further proof that their ideologically driven war was a viable cause. And so, inspired by Iranian aggression, the anti-American jihad kept ramping up.
 
Maybe Obama meant the fabled halcyon days of the 1990s, when President Clinton tried to mend fences with Iran?
 
In 1996 a team of jihadists–financed and trained by Teheran–blew up the Khobar Towers building in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen. Clinton’s administration learned that Iran was behind the attacks. But Washington brushed aside any notion of retaliating against Iran, in order to facilitate a “reconciliation” with that murderous regime. In an eerie parallel with today, Iran expressed its openness to U.S. groveling–an opportunity Clinton seized.
 
So, Clinton attended a speech by Iran’s leader at the U.N.; the administration also permitted the sale of much-needed aircraft parts to Iran, among other sweeteners. Granted the cover of respectability, Iran was emboldened to continue fomenting Islamist aggression and avidly pursue its then-embryonic nuclear program.
 
Obama’s appeasing diplomacy re-enacts the disastrous policy of the past. Our policymakers evaded Iran’s character as an enemy, and by rewarding its aggression with bribes and conciliation, they encouraged a spiral of further attacks. 
 
No. Bush was no exception to this trend. After 9/11 his administration invited Iran–the leading sponsor of Islamist terrorism–to join an anti-terrorism coalition(!). Talk of an axis of evil was quickly abandoned, and Washington backed the European scheme to bribe Iran to halt its nuclear program. By late last year, there was talk of opening a U.S. Special Interests Section (a step down from an embassy) in Iran. Meanwhile Bush’s welfare mission in Iraq negated U.S. security and left Iran untouched to grow more powerful and resolute.
 
A genuinely new, rational policy toward Iran would turn away from the last 30 years and begin by facing up to Teheran’s ongoing proxy war against us.

 

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Ron Paul: ‘Get Rid of the Federal Reserve’

By Rick Pedraza, Newsmax

Rep. Ron Paul, in a speech delivered to an enthusiastic crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference, said conservatives “have to be devoted to and willing to stand by and defend the Constitution, and have the position that it is absolutely necessary to get rid of the Federal Reserve system.”

Paul, who ran for president in 2008 championing the Constitution, talked about his bill seeking to abolish the Federal Reserve, which he said is getting bipartisan support in the Congress.
“We’ve gotten ourselves in a mess because the conservative movement, which was designed to bring us back to our roots of limited government, smaller government and more individual liberty, hasn’t happened,” said Paul, R-Texas.
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