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Jillian Bandes, Townhall.com

 

Thousands of union members rallied for Obamacare on Capitol Hill on June 26 in a massive display of union outreach that threatened to deliver more votes for a controversial “public plan” option.

 

The rally came on the heels of Obama raising the possibility that unions would be exempt from taxing health care benefits. Obama said he was open to imposing new taxes on Americans who are not union members, which is a principle he adamantly opposed during his presidential campaign.

 

The hypocrisy was easily explained by one Republican strategist who was closely following health care developments on the Hill.

 

"Is it any surprise that unions are one of he greatest contributors to the Democratic party, and that they're now exempt from one of the most controversial taxes he's considering?" he asked. "It's not illegal, but gosh, does it look bad." Read article.

 

Deroy Murdock, NRO.com

 

Betsy McCaughey reads massive healthcare bills so you don’t have to.

 

New York’s former lieutenant governor, now chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, fired the torpedo that ultimately sank HillaryCare. While the sheer girth of that 1,431-page legislative juggernaut intimidated nearly everyone, McCaughey devoured it. Her resulting January 1994 New Republic article, “No Exit,” unmasked HillaryCare’s previously overlooked warts and sores. The horror that McCaughey revealed eventually spelled that initiative’s doom.

 

McCaughey has done it again. In a June 19 Wall Street Journal op-ed, she dissected the 615-page draft of Ted Kennedy’s Affordable Health Choices Act. The Massachusetts Democrat’s bill is, essentially, the Senate’s version of ObamaCare. McCaughey’s “light reading” is scarier than Stephen King.

 

Congruent with the socialist zeitgeist of the Bush-Obama years, pages 10 and 11 empower the Health and Human Services secretary to compel insurers to pay their customers rebates on their premiums based on “a percentage that the Secretary shall by regulation determine . . . ” This amount would reflect aggregated expenses on non-claims costs exceeding industry averages. Thus, the HHS secretary may determine health-insurance companies’ profit margins. Read article.

 

Paul Jacob, Townhall.com

 

The House just passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade carbon emissions control act. If it passes the Senate, expect the president — the bill’s pusher-in-chief — to sign it at first opportunity.

 

I have not read the bill, so I should not comment on it at length. But then, neither has any congressman read the now 1000-pages-and-plus wonder. So they should not have passed it.

 

We are supposed to believe it is a good bill because we must trust the congressional assistants who wrote it. If anything is a testament to “the power of belief” it's the enthusiasm for a bill that has not been read, much less understood.

 

One thing is certain: The cap-and-trade program will increase the cost of energy in the United States. It is essentially a big, fat tax increase on businesses and consumers . . . in the face of which, businesses and consumers will decrease activity, depressing the economy. Read article.

Betty Freauf, NWV.com

 

During the 1980s radicals were promoting the Sanctuary Movement and liberal congregations were proclaiming themselves to be “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. But in early 2009 pastors across the country were being called on by the Department of Homeland Security to join “Clergy Response Teams” in order to placate and control the people of America in the event of local or national emergencies.

 

But it wasn’t the illegals they were worried about. A few months later as government officials were hearing about the planned Tea Party gatherings on April 15, 2009, that same Department issued a warning that they are watching large numbers of right-wing protestors.

 

Homeland Security wanted all of these Americans to know they were suspects and were being watched closely! The Assessment published as an Unclassified/For Official Use Only document by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security fears the current economic climate and because of the historical presidential election that put an African American in the White House may fuel resurgence in radicalization and recruitment. Selwyn Duke in his article about who are the most violent states it perfectly “Which Side Really Inspires Violence, the right or the left?”

 

The Assessment mentioned the proposed imposition of firearms and restrictions and weapons bans likely would attract new members into the ranks of right-wing extremists groups as well as potentially spur some of them to begin planning and training for violence against the government (something the Declaration of Independence allows when a government is corrupt) And, yes it did. More guns were sold than ever before. Read article.

 

Austin Bay, Washington Times.com

 

Call this coming July Fourth Dependence Day - the day marking prudent and responsible America's realization that, indeed, we do depend on the diplomatic power and technological capability of anti-missile defensive systems.

 

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il is threatening to fire a ballistic missile "test shot" at Hawaii on July Fourth. Mr. Kim's hyperbolic bombast and paranoid theatrics likely engage Pyongyang's opaque domestic intrigues. Still, the missile and the moment are dangerous - and instructive.

 

The first decade of the 21st century has made it clear that we are engaged in a global battle between the constructive and the destructive - constructive nations desiring peace and economic development confronted by destructive, extortionist rogue states and transnational terror syndicates. Ballistic missiles carrying nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are marquee weapons, militarily and politically, in the bad guys' arsenal. Read article.

 

Irwin Stelzer, TImesOnline.co.uk

 

Obama is about to engineer the takeover of the healthcare sector — unless private-sector insurers can figure out how to compete with a new government entity that needs no profit and can set premiums secure in the knowledge that taxpayer funds are available in a pinch. Estimated cost over 10 years: $1.3-1.6 trillion (£790-970 billion) adding to the upward pressure on taxes, especially on entrepreneurs, created by the administration’s runaway deficits.

 

The administration simply has no credible plan to reduce the deficit to preserve the value of the dollar and to prevent interest rates from rising as wary investors price the risk of inflation into what they are prepared to pay for government IOUs.

 

Two thoughts pierce the gloom. The first is that the American economy might be large enough, and resilient enough, to remain competitive even bearing the weight of the new inefficiencies. The second is that voters will demand a change of course before Obamanomics is permanently embedded in our system. Voters worry that they are leaving their children a mountain of debt. Already Obama’s approval rating among independent voters — Wall Street Journal analyst Gerald Seib calls them “the canaries in the coal mine of American politics” — has fallen from 60% to 45%. Even if the president doesn’t get the message, Congress might. Read article.

 

Peggy Noonan, Online WSJ.com

 

Something seems off with our young president. He appears jarred. Difficult history has come over the transom.

 

Are we beginning the journey back to anything like fiscal health? Who thinks the answer is yes? There's a pervasive sense that still, nine months into the crash, "we live in castles built on sand." We're not building on anything secure. Instead, and more and more, we have a series of presidential actions that seem less like proposals than non sequiturs. A new health-care program that Congress itself says will cost a trillion dollars over 10 years? A new energy program that will cost however many hundreds of billions in however many years? Running General Motors, and discussing where its plants should be, and what the interiors of the cars should look like, and shouldn't the little cup holder be bigger to account for Starbucks-sized coffee? Wait, what if it's a venti latte? One imagines the conversation in the car czar's office: "You know, I've always wanted to see a mauve car because mauve is my favorite color, I mean to the extent it's a color."

 

There is a persistent sense of extraneous effort, of ambitions too big and yet too small, too off point, too base-pleading, too ideological, too unaware of the imperatives. And there is the depressing psychological effect of seeing government grow so much, so big, so fast. This encourages a sense that things are out of control and cannot be made better.

 

In terms of our security, we face challenges all over the world, from state and nonstate actors. Today a headline popped up on my screen: North Korea has threatened to attack us. A mordant response: Get in line, buddy. The administration, which has been appropriately modest in its face toward the world, should be more modest internally, and seek a new and serious bipartisan consensus on our defense system, our security, our civil defense, our safety. This of course is an impossible dream, but it was impossible back in the fractious '50s to reach a workable consensus on a strategy toward the Soviets. And yet we did it. Do we have anything like a bipartisan strategy for our age? Not nearly. We're split in two, in three. We'll wish someday we did. It is amazing we don't even talk about this. Read article.

 

Bill O'Reilly, Townhall.com

 

It seems every day there is another example of media deception in America. With the Fourth of July approaching, it is well worth remembering why the Founding Fathers gave the press special privileges. They wanted journalists to report honestly, to give the folks accurate, unbiased information so they could make informed decisions about who should hold power. Many of the Founders, like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, didn't much like the press, but they understood that, for a democratic Republic to work, voters need honest information.

 

Unfortunately, the vision of a free and honest press is fast disappearing in America. Let me give you yet another vivid example. This week a poll by The New York Times asked: "Would you be willing to pay higher taxes so that all Americans have health insurance?" Read article.

 

William Schneider, National Journal.com

 

Three new polls are out, and all convey the same message: Progress in Washington has stalled, partly because President Obama is more popular than his policies.

 

Take the CBS News/New York Times poll, which gave the president an overall approval rating of 63 percent. Obama gets just shy of 60 percent approval on foreign policy and terrorism, his strongest issues. His economic rating is holding up reasonably well (57 percent approval), even though the prevailing sentiment is that the president's economic policies have not yet had much effect.

 

On health care, Obama's ratings are less than 50 percent. Many Americans are not yet familiar with his health care proposals.

 

The president gets his worst marks on his handling of the auto industry (41 percent approval). The public doesn't like bailouts. "Some of those things are popular; some of those things are not popular," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs commented in response to the poll. "I think the president would tell you that he's going to do what he thinks is in the best interest of the American economy."

 

Bottom line? In the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, three-quarters of Americans said they like Obama. But only about half (51 percent) said they support his policies. Read article.

 

Christopher Hitchens, Slate.com

 

Want to take a noninterventionist position? All right, then, take a noninterventionist position. This would mean not referring to Khamenei in fawning tones as the supreme leader and not calling Iran itself by the tyrannical title of "the Islamic republic." But be aware that nothing will stop the theocrats from slandering you for interfering anyway.

 

Also try to bear in mind that one day you will have to face the young Iranian democrats who risked their all in the battle and explain to them just what you were doing when they were being beaten and gassed. (Hint: Don't make your sole reference to Iranian dictatorship an allusion to a British-organized coup in 1953; the mullahs think that it proves their main point, and this generation has more immediate enemies to confront.)

 

There is then the larger question of the Iranian theocracy and its continual, arrogant intervention in our affairs: its export of violence and cruelty and lies to Lebanon and Palestine and Iraq and its unashamed defiance of the United Nations, the European Union, and the International Atomic Energy Agency on the nontrivial matter of nuclear weapons. I am sure that I was as impressed as anybody by our president's decision to quote Martin Luther King—rather late in the week—on the arc of justice and the way in which it eventually bends.

 

It was just that in a time of crisis and urgency he was citing the wrong King text (the right one is to be found in the "Letter From a Birmingham Jail"), and it was also as if he were speaking as the president of Iceland or Uruguay rather than as president of these United States. Coexistence with a nuclearized, fascistic theocracy in Iran is impossible even in the short run. The mullahs understand this with perfect clarity. Why can't we? Read article.

 

Review & Outlook, WSJ.com

 

President Obama finally found his voice on Iran, saying the world was "appalled and outraged" by the regime's suppression of peaceful protests. Mr. Obama also hinted that he was prepared to reconsider direct negotiations with the regime. "We have provided a path whereby Iran can reach out to the international community," he said. "What we've been seeing over the last several days, the last couple of weeks, obviously is not encouraging in terms of the path."

 

So where do we go from here, particularly now that demonstrations are abating in the face of increased repression? One place to begin is by studying the example of U.S. policy toward Solidarity, the Polish trade union that challenged the Communist regime in the early 1980s. As with the "Green Revolution" in Iran, Solidarity did not begin as a frontal assault on the regime itself, but rather as a peaceful shipyard strike. But it quickly grew into a broad social movement, encompassing shipyard and factory workers, intellectuals, priests and nearly everyone who didn't have a direct stake in the regime's survival.

 

One place to begin is by studying the example of U.S. policy toward Solidarity, the Polish trade union that challenged the Communist regime in the early 1980s. As with the "Green Revolution" in Iran, Solidarity did not begin as a frontal assault on the regime itself, but rather as a peaceful shipyard strike. But it quickly grew into a broad social movement, encompassing shipyard and factory workers, intellectuals, priests and nearly everyone who didn't have a direct stake in the regime's survival. Read article.