How Free is Your State

Freedom in the 50 States: Index of Personal and Economic Freedom

Strange how the most "liberal" states are the least free.

Anti-Semitic UN to Act

The loathsome United Nations will, in its great tradition of antisemitism, act against Israel this week.

The Great Mona Charen writes,

Israel's Deadliest Foe to Strike This Week

The war over the war in Gaza is heating up. Next week, the United Nations General Assembly will consider the tendentious Goldstone Report, the highest profile exercise in blaming the victim in the U.N.'s tawdry history. Simultaneously, lawyers in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and Norway are drawing up criminal indictments against IDF officers who participated in the Gaza operation. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that a number of names are on a police watch list for arrest and detention should they attempt to enter Britain.

Israel's enemies certainly seek to terrorize and demoralize Israel. But the more important campaign -- which is gaining traction -- is to delegitimize her and to brand Israel's self-defense as a war crime.

Hamas wants the world to recognize them as a legitimate government, and many in the world do. If they are, then it seems to me that the same rules should apply. This piece offers a comparison.

ISRAEL

Consider the assessment of Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and a veteran of the Gulf War and the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Macedonia. "During Operation Cast Lead, the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population."

What army has offered 48 hours notice to its enemies of planned operations? Israel did so, dropping 2 million leaflets in advance of army movements. Twenty-four hours before the IDF moved on a suspected terrorist site, the army phoned civilians to warn them to evacuate. There were 100,000 calls. And five minutes before an operation began, the IDF sent out text messages. The calls and messages contained not just warnings, but instructions on which roads were safe to take and which schools or other buildings could be used for shelter. In the midst of the conflict, hundreds of trucks brought food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza.

In Rafa, Israel sought to close 225 tunnels (with 800 entrances) used to smuggle arms to Gaza from Egypt. The easiest and safest course for the IDF would have been to level the homes without warning that contained the entrances using air power or tanks. In Gaza City, to avoid civilian casualties, IDF infantrymen went house to house, encountering booby traps along the way and fending off seven attempted kidnappings.

Hamas was so confident that Israel would not knowingly shoot at civilians that they hid behind human shields throughout the short war. It was common, when word came of an impending attack, for Hamas to send children out to play in the streets at that moment. "Will I shoot?" Gruber asks. "I will not." There is video of a terrorist with a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder grabbing a 10-year-old boy by the collar and dragging him across the street to deter Israeli snipers. And it worked. Israel has similar video (from Reuters actually) showing U.N. ambulances ferrying armed men. "Yes," says Gruber with resignation, "the 'ambulances' were always at the front."

HAMAS

There are scores of other examples -- Hamas firing from mosques, schools, private homes, and hospitals. The very fact that Hamas used human shields betrays their admission that Israel abides by ethical standards in war fighting. They took advantage of Israel's moral qualms about harming non-combatants. Now they accuse Israel of the crimes they themselves committed -- deliberately targeting civilians by raining down 12,000 missiles on southern Israel since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Liberals, amongst whom antisemitism is mainstream (of course they accuse we conservatives of it constantly), will back the UN in efforts to punish Israel for defending herself and support the real terrorists.

UPDATE: Just in case anyone objects to my view that modern liberalism™ is the home of mainstream antisemitism, this from Caroline Glick;

Former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold should probably buy himself a flak jacket. Gold is scheduled to debate Richard Goldstone at Brandeis University next Thursday and the anti-Israel forces are organizing quite a reception for him.

Goldstone, who chaired the UN Human Rights Council's commission charged with accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, has become a darling of the anti-Israel Left in the weeks since his report accusing Israel of committing both war crimes and crimes against humanity was published last month. And anti-Israeli leftists don't like the idea of someone challenging his libelous attacks against Israel in a public debate at a university.

In an e-mail to a campus list-serve, Brandeis student and anti-Israel activist Jonathan Sussman called on his fellow anti-Zionists to disrupt the event that will pit the "neutral" Goldstone against Gold with his "wildly pro-Zionist message." Sussman invited his list-serve members to join him at a meeting to "discuss a possible response."

As the young community organizer sees it, "Possibilities include inviting Palestinian speakers to come participate, seeding the audience with people who can disrupt the Zionist narrative, protest and direct action." He closed his missive with a plaintive call to arms: "F**k the occupation."

Apparently the aspiring political organizer never considered another possibility: listening to what Gold has to say.

More to follow on liberalsim™ and antisemitism.

Our Incompetent Government - POTUS Inner circle

A note to the President and his yes men senior aides - YOU are the power. Please grow wake up.

The Great Mark Steyn tells the tale.

REALITY CHECK ON THE OBAMA AS CAESAR CULT

Valerie Jarrett announced the other day that “we’re going to speak truth to power”.

Who’s Valerie Jarrett? She’s “Senior Advisor” to the President of the United States – ie, the leader of the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. You would think the most powerful man in the most powerful nation would find a hard job finding anyone on the planet to “speak truth to power” to. But I suppose if you’re as eager to do so as his Senior Advisor, there’s always somebody out there: The Supreme Leader of Iran. The Prime Minister of Belgium. The Deputy Tourism Minister of the Solomon Islands. But no. The Senior Advisor has selected targets closer to home: “I think that what the administration has said very clearly is that we’re going to speak truth to power. When we saw all of the distortions in the course of the summer, when people were coming down to town hall meetings and putting up signs that were scaring seniors to death…”

Read the whole thing, there is a lot more...

Meanwhile, Larry David is now doing televised NEA exhibits on his HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. Christians are said to be “angry” at him because of an episode in which, after he accidentally sprays his urine on a picture of Jesus, his assistant mistakes the droplets for tears and calls in her mother to witness the miracle of Christ weeping. Ha-ha! Oh, those brave transgressive artists! Of course, Christians aren’t “angry” in the sense that two US residents arrested last week are. The pair – one an American citizen, the other Canadian – were so “angry” about the Mohammed cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that they hatched a plot to kill the artist and his editor. As many commentators pointed out, Mr David’s splashy stunt is a dreary provocation: It’s easy to be provocative with people who can’t be provoked. If he were to start urinating in a more Mecca-ly direction, he’d find an entirely more motivated crowd waiting for him at the stage door.

But I liked the point made by the Anchoress, a writer at the magazine First Things: Putting Mohammed et al aside, if Larry David had a yen to urinate hither and yon, wouldn’t it have been “braver” to have done it to the religious icon du jour? That’s to say, Barack Obama. And then maybe Ashton Kutcher could have marveled at how even Obama’s image was empathizing tearily with all 687 million Americans without health insurance. Or, alternatively, dribbling warm champagne from his Norwegian Nobel banquet toast. C’mon, Larry. Sure, you might not have a career afterward, but, unlike any Islamo-provocations, you’re not gonna get killed. Just fired, and probably damned as a racist. But at least you wouldn’t be a simpering suck-up to power like Rocco Landesman and the other creeps.

A Terrible Tragedy

On Saturday night a Seattle police officer was in the residential Central District in a marked police car with a female trainee when the car was hit several times with gunfire. The police officer was killed, the trainee was injured.

Seattle police say officer killed in shooting

Police say a male officer was training a female student officer in a marked patrol car Saturday night when their vehicle was struck several times by gunfire. They say the student officer suffered minor injuries in the shooting that took in the mostly residential Central District.

Pray for them.

Ok - So It Took an Outrage

Again I find myself apologizing to both of my faithful readers, life continues to be very, very full and sadly blogging fell down the priority list. I promise that when I get settled into my apartment in Japan (yes, I spend that much time there) I will have more time to blog.

Anyway, the thing that prompted me was this.

Loraine Mullen-Kress carries a Bank of America credit card and religiously pays off her balance.

"Flawless credit," she boasted.

Yet now, her good credit habits could cost her. Earlier this month Bank of America started notifying customers like Mullen-Kress that they will be charged a new annual fee of $29 to $99.

"There is a big segment of their population that they will have never made money on, which is people who pay their bills on time every month," said Ben Woolsey, Director of Consumer Research at CreditCards.com.

Bank of America said in a statement: "At this point we're testing the fee on a very small number of accounts and haven't made any final decisions." Citigroup is also trying out an annual fee with some card holders, and analysts expect more banks to follow their lead.

The banks are starting to charge fees to reliable customers in response to a slew of new credit card industry regulations that will limit when banks can hike interest rates. Cardholders who get a new annual fee notice in the mail will be in a no-win situation.

"They can either pay that fee or they can close the account, and if they have had the account for a while and they close it, they are potentially going to hurt their credit card score," said Woolsey.

If they do this to you let them know what you think. After all of the business that I have done with Bank of America, if they start charging me a fee to use their card, I will never apply to them for credit again. I will use Discover, or JCB, or Fred's (a Steve Martin joke).

I seriously hope that, if they try this, it hurts them badly.

Our Incompetent Government - ICE

Not only is our government incompetent, but now we have law enforcement agencies that are actively working AGAINST our country.

From the Washington Times, ICE gags sheriff (h/t to the great Michelle Malkin)

The spat between controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surfaced on July 23 and 24 when the sheriff's deputies were ordered by ICE officials to release illegal immigrants who had been caught in a broader criminal sweep. Sheriff Arpaio complained to the media; a federal spokesman claimed the release was the sheriff's fault; and the sheriff then released audiotapes proving that ICE officials, not he, had ordered the release.

Caught looking foolish, ICE officials threatened to withdraw the sheriff's authority to enforce any immigration laws because the sheriff had violated a ban on contacting the media without first obtaining approval from the Department of Homeland Security, which is ICE's parent agency.

Yes, you read that correctly: The sheriff was ordered to shut up. To make it clearer, ICE's principal legal adviser, Peter S. Vincent, wrote to Arpaio attorney Robert Driscoll on July 31 that the sheriff's department, under the terms of its agreement with ICE, must "coordinate with ICE regarding information to be released to the media regarding actions taken under this memorandum of agreement."

To Mr. Driscoll's complaint that the requirement violates the sheriff's First Amendment rights (not to mention the public's right to know), Mr. Vincent replied: "Few courts would consider an obligation to consult with the federal government before releasing information to the media that may involve sensitive law enforcement issues to be an unreasonable burden on the right to free speech." Furthermore, he wrote, government can "lawfully" require "the surrender of a constitutional right ... provided the conditions are reasonable."

Our Dear Leader is happy to compromise your fundamental Constitutional rights, but will make those same rights freely available as ABSOLUTE rights if you are not a citizen and are able to sneak over the border illegally.

If you do not see a big problem here, you are numb. It is time to rise up.

Here is Your Health Reform

Liberal efforts to get you to believe that current efforts to "reform" health care will not be a government takeover are a lie.

Yes, when they say this they are liars. Representative for Life Barney Frank (Comm - MA) let the cat out of the bag.

And what will Single Payer get you. This is the plan used in Canada and the U.K. Just in case you believe it when supporters of Single Payer tell you that these health system are taking adequate care of their patients, read this;

Patients forced to live in agony after NHS refuses to pay for painkilling injections

The Government's drug rationing watchdog says "therapeutic" injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.

Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy.

So, they will give up effective therapy and substitute "alternative" junk because it is cheaper - effectiveness be damned. Does the government care at all?

No.

The NICE guidelines admit that evidence was limited for many back pain treatments, including those it recommended. Where scientific proof was lacking, advice was instead taken from its expert group. But specialists are furious that while the group included practitioners of alternative therapies, there was no one with expertise in conventional pain relief medicine to argue against a decision to significantly restrict its use.

Dr Jonathan Richardson, a consultant pain specialist from Bradford Hospitals Trust, is among more than 50 medics who have written to NICE urging the body to reconsider its decision, which was taken in May.

He said: "The consequences of the NICE decision will be devastating for thousands of patients. It will mean more people on opiates, which are addictive, and kill 2,000 a year. It will mean more people having spinal surgery, which is incredibly risky, and has a 50 per cent failure rate."

There are thousands of cases like this in both the U.K. and Canada. This is not an unusual situation.

So, why will we do this to ourselves? Power, that's why.

From John Hinderacker at Power Line; Thoughts on Health Care "Reform".

We are going to destroy our health care and very seriously damage our country simple to exercise a socialist ideology without concern as to results.

The change you get.

Obama's 2012 Campaign Slogans

Doug Ross has the early contenders for Barack Obama's 2012 campaign slogans.

A few;

• "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You, Ask How You Can Illegally Contribute To My Campaign"

• "Your long national nightmare is not over"

• "It's Mourning Again in America"

Go read, there are many more, like;

• "Isn't It Time You Were Disappointed Again?"

• "Read My Lips: No New Tax Cuts"

This Is Why They Hate It When We Read The Bills

Democrats and other Liberals™ (socialists, communists, etc.) absolutely do not want people reading the legislation that they are, in their ever so democratic and liberal way, want to jam down our throats. If we were to find out what is in their legislation, they are afraid that we might not like it.

Like this; It's Not An Option

Congress: It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

h/t to the great Michelle Malkin

They are lying to us and we are (mostly) still asleep. Our freedoms (to buy what we want with our own money, for instance) are being taken away from us and most of the country is completely unaware.

This is extreme dangerous, we are being led by a government that has no respect for the people that they govern. They want us under their thumb.

Read the whole piece.

The public option won't be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.

Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn't be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans' lives.

It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It's scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we'll come across in the final 1,002.

Idiots

I am most amused when an organization uses politicians that they have bought and paid for (Mr. Obama bought and paid for by organized labor) to gain an advantage using our unethical and incompetent government go on to injure themselves. But, being blinded by partisan ideology and greed, do not even care (or notice).

The great George F. Will tells the tale.

Labor in the Driver's Seat

"Bailout" is now both a noun and a verb, and FedEx characterizes what Congress might do for UPS as the "Brown Bailout." But properly used, "bailout" denotes a rescue of an economic entity from financial distress. Although UPS is suffering from the recession, so is FedEx. Furthermore, UPS, whose revenue is 36 percent larger than FedEx's, began advocating this injury to FedEx long before this recession.

What UPS is doing is called rent-seeking -- bending public power for private advantage by hindering a competitor. This practice, which expands exponentially as government expands arithmetically, is banal but can have entertaining ricochets:

If Congress makes FedEx's operations more precarious by changing the law to make it easier for local disputes to cripple its operations, Smith says a multibillion-dollar order for 15 Boeing 777s will be automatically canceled. One of the unions lobbying on behalf of UPS and the Teamsters is the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, whose members make 777s.

As always, read the whole thing for two reasons (or more);
1. Mr. Will is one of the finest writers alive and is both crystal clear and entertaining.
2. He provides valuable legal history and supporting arguments leading to the conclusion that I quoted above.

...for three - three reasons (channeling Monty Python)

3. It is important to understand now loyal Mr. Obama is to his owners, and make no mistake, he is owned by organized labor.