Monday, December 31, 2018
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Jim Acosta Will Only Behave When There's A Democrat In The White House
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/jim-acosta-media-bias/
President Trump says he's drafting rules of decorum for White House reporters like Jim Acosta. Funny how unruly press behavior nevercomes up when a Democrat is president.
President Trump says he's drafting rules of decorum for White House reporters like Jim Acosta. Funny how unruly press behavior nevercomes up when a Democrat is president.
Saturday, November 17, 2018
So, Who Are the Real Fascists?
So, Who Are the Real Fascists?: So, Who Are the Real Fascists, massive government control of every important facet of your life, more control over the 'free enterprise' system, free healthcare, limits on free speech, gun confiscation, UN interference? Who is aligned with the masked and violent Antifa, marxism, media, education, indoctrination
Monday, November 12, 2018
Thursday, November 8, 2018
PragerU Gets American History Wrong - American Renaissance
PragerU Gets American History Wrong - American Renaissance: No wonder the Left is more convincing.
Saturday, November 3, 2018
Rap Sheet: ***632*** Acts of Media-Approved Violence and Harassment Against Trump Supporters | Breitbart
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2018/07/05/rap-sheet-acts-of-media-approved-violence-and-harassment-against-trump-supporters/
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Alexandria+Ocasio-Cortez%2C+Democratic+candidate+for+Congress+from+New+York%26%2339%3Bs+14th+Congressional+District+%28the+Bronx+and+Queens%29%2C+recently+compared+dealing+with+those+who+deny+climate+change+and+oppose+her+party%26%2339%3Bs+measures+to+counter+this+%26quot...
Alexandria+Ocasio-Cortez%2C+Democratic+candidate+for+Congress+from+New+York%26%2339%3Bs+14th+Congressional+District+%28the+Bronx+and+Queens%29%2C+recently+compared+dealing+with+those+who+deny+climate+change+and+oppose+her+party%26%2339%3Bs+measures+to+counter+this+%26quot...: There are striking similarities between the Nazis and liberals as regards environmentalism.
You+can+smell+the+hypocrisy+over+at+the+United+Auto+Workers.+Whatever+idealism+and+legitimacy+may+have+adhered+to+that+union+in+its+early+days%2C+seeking+better+wages+and+safer+working+conditions+in+the+face+of+outright+thuggery%2C+has+been+lost.+Unions+...
You+can+smell+the+hypocrisy+over+at+the+United+Auto+Workers.+Whatever+idealism+and+legitimacy+may+have+adhered+to+that+union+in+its+early+days%2C+seeking+better+wages+and+safer+working+conditions+in+the+face+of+outright+thuggery%2C+has+been+lost.+Unions+...: You can smell the hypocrisy over at the United Auto Workers.
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Saturday, October 27, 2018
Only the Left Can Stop Political Violence in America
Only the Left Can Stop Political Violence in America: The Left unleashed it, the Left must stop it.
Friday, October 26, 2018
Senator+Bernie+Sanders%2C+in+keeping+with+his+socialist+proclivities%2C+wants+single-payer+government+run+healthcare+for+everyone.+As+he+describes+it+on+his+website%2C%0D%0A%0D%0A%0D%0AHealth+care+must+be+recognized+as+a+right%2C+not+a+privilege.+Every+man%2C+woman+and+ch...
Senator+Bernie+Sanders%2C+in+keeping+with+his+socialist+proclivities%2C+wants+single-payer+government+run+healthcare+for+everyone.+As+he+describes+it+on+his+website%2C%0D%0A%0D%0A%0D%0AHealth+care+must+be+recognized+as+a+right%2C+not+a+privilege.+Every+man%2C+woman+and+ch...: Democrats are welcome to run on Medicare for All. It won’t be Paul Ryan pushing Granny off the cliff, but instead Bernie and his fellow
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Analysis | Are Republicans seeking to ‘get rid of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security’? from The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/23/are-republicans-seeking-get-rid-medicare-medicaid-social-security/?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.10aaea9506a0
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Fact-Checkers Without Evidence
https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/24/fact-checkers-without-evidence/#.W9CTQphsme0.email
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Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Four U.S. citizens killed in Obama drone strikes, but 3 were not intended targets - Politifact.com
Four U.S. citizens killed in Obama drone strikes, but 3 were not intended targets - https://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2014/mar/19/kesha-rogers/four-us-citizens-killed-obama-drone-strikes-3-were/
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
Monday, October 15, 2018
New York Post: Why Medicare for All is a rotten deal for most
I thought you'd be interested in this story from the New York Post.
Why Medicare for All is a rotten deal for most
https://nyp.st/2x7tuCv
For more on the New York Post and to download our apps, visit https://nypost.com
Who and What Threaten the Constitution?
https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/14/who-and-what-threaten-the-constitution/#.W8TYJ3BGDHM.email
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Tuesday, October 9, 2018
How Scandinavian Countries Pay for Their Government Spending - Tax Foundation
How Scandinavian Countries Pay for Their Government Spending - Tax Foundation: In a recent interview on ABC’s This Week, Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders reiterated his position that he wants the United States to look more like Scandinavian countries policy-wise: George Stephanopoulos: “I can hear the Republican attack ad right now: ‘He wants America to look more like Scandinavia.’” Bernie Sanders: “What’s wrong with that?” Specifically, Sanders …
Here’s How To Successfully Debate A Democratic Socialist
Here’s How To Successfully Debate A Democratic Socialist: As the democratic socialists become more prominent, both nationally and at our dinner tables, it’s very likely you will find yourself debating one.
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
The+Democrats+have+attacked+Kavanaugh+from+day+one%2C+and+now%2C+of+course%2C+they+go+after+his+credibility%2C+as+if+they+had+any+themselves.%26nbsp%3B%26nbsp%3BHence+this+AP+article%2C+titled+%26quot%3BDemocrats%26%2339%3B+new+tack%3A+Go+hard+after+Kavanaugh%26%2339%3Bs+credibility.%26q...
The+Democrats+have+attacked+Kavanaugh+from+day+one%2C+and+now%2C+of+course%2C+they+go+after+his+credibility%2C+as+if+they+had+any+themselves.%26nbsp%3B%26nbsp%3BHence+this+AP+article%2C+titled+%26quot%3BDemocrats%26%2339%3B+new+tack%3A+Go+hard+after+Kavanaugh%26%2339%3Bs+credibility.%26q...: As if they had any themselves. A brief trip down memory lane.
Friday, September 28, 2018
The Feinstein Farce Will Let Rapists Go Free
https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/27/the-feinstein-farce-will-let-rapists-go-free/#.W65BkxupZCQ.email
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Tuesday, September 18, 2018
TheHill.com: Lehman got burned holding the hot potato the government baked
From TheHill.com:
Lehman Brothers is a footnote to the fraud and scandal of bad federal housing policy.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/406986-lehman-got-burnt-holding-the-hot-potato-the-government-baked
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A Proven Catalyst For State Economic Success
https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/a-proven-catalyst-for-state-economic-success/
There's perhaps no better place for states to start than to follow North Carolina's tax reform model.
There's perhaps no better place for states to start than to follow North Carolina's tax reform model.
Monday, September 17, 2018
Cronkite
Today, we must develop federal structures on a global level to deal with world problems. We need a system of enforceable world law, a democratic federal world government. Most important, we should sign and ratify the treaty for a permanent international criminal court. That is now at the core of the world federalist movement’s drive. That court will enable the world to hold individuals accountable for their crimes against humanity.
https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/one-world-government-walter-cronkite-im-glad-to-sit-at-the-right-hand-of-satan
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Senator Cory Booker and “The Only Good Zionist is a Dead Zionist”
Senator Cory Booker and “The Only Good Zionist is a Dead Zionist”: Senator Cory Booker and The Only Good Zionist is a Dead Zionist, There is a deep racist and anti-Semitic disease in the leadership of the Democrats
Saturday, September 15, 2018
What You Need To Know About
Medicare For All, Part II
Policy
I offer market-based healthcare solutions.
John C. Goodman Contributor
i
ANAHEIM, CA - SEPTEMBER 08: Former U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee rally at the Anaheim Convention Center on September 8, 2018 in
Anaheim, California. This is Obama's rst
campaign rally for the 2018 midterm elections. (Photo by Barbara
Davidson/Getty Images)
This is a continuation of What You Need To Know About Medicare For
All, Part I
8. The real cost of Medicare includes hidden costs imposed on
doctors and taxpayers.
Blahous estimates that the administrative cost of private insurance is 13%, more
than twice the 6% it costs to administer Medicare. Single-payer advocates often
use this type of comparison to argue that universal Medicare would reduce health
care costs. But this estimate ignores the hidden costs Medicare shifts to the
providers of care, including the enormous amount of paperwork that is required
in order to get paid.
Medicare is the vehicle by which the federal government has been trying to force
the entire health care system to adopt electronic medical records – a costly
change that appears to have done nothing to increase quality or reduce
costs, while making it easier for doctors to “up code” and bill the government for
more money.
There are also the social costs of collecting taxes to fund Medicare, including the
costs of preparation and filing and the costs of avoiding and evading taxation. By
some estimates, the social cost of collecting a dollar of taxes can be as high as 25
cents.
MORE FROM FORBES
A Milliman & Robertson study estimates that when all these costs are included
Medicare and Medicaid spend two-thirds more on administration than private
insurance spends.
Single payer advocates are also fond of comparing the administrative costs of
health care in the United States and Canada – again claiming there is a potential
for large savings. But these comparisons invariably include the cost of private
insurance premium collection (advertising, agents' fees, etc.), while ignoring the
cost of tax collection to pay for public insurance. Using the most conservative
estimate of the social cost of collecting taxes, economist Benjamin Zycher
calculates that the excess burden of a universal Medicare program would be twice
as high as the administrative costs of universal private coverage.
9. Not a single problem in Obamacare would go away under
Medicare for all.
If everyone could join Medicare, what premium would they have to pay? Would
the premiums be actuarially fair, representing the expected cost of the enrollee’s
heath care? Or would there be subsidies and cross subsidies as there are under
Obamacare? Would the premium vary by age? By income? By health status? By
healthy living choices?
What about the role of employers? Obamacare tried to force them to pay a large
part of the cost of reform by imposing a mandate and requiring them to cover a
liberal set of benefits. Economists tell us that employee benefits are substitutes
for wages and are therefore “paid for” by the employees. But on paper, employers
write checks for about 75% of the cost of insurance for about 95% of the people
who have private insurance. Under Medicare for all, would they get off scot free?
Then there is the exchange. Medicare has one. It’s how roughly one-third of
seniors get into Medicare Advantage plans. Like the Obamacare exchanges, the
Medicare Advantage exchange has government subsidies for private insurance,
mandated benefits, annual open enrollment and no discrimination based on
health status. And, it seems to work reasonably well.
The Obamacare exchanges, by contrast, have been a disaster – with spiraling
premiums, unconscionably high deductibles, extra charges for chronic patients
who need specialty drugs, and a race to the bottom on provider networks that
exclude more and more of the best doctors and the best hospitals.
What will happen when the same politicians, catering to the same interest groups
that gave us Obamacare, set out to design an exchange for their Medicare-for-all
program? That’s anyone’s guess.
But if Democrats know how to defy the special interests and create a workable
exchange, wouldn’t they have done that already in the market for individual
insurance?
10. Medicare is already on a path to health care rationing.
Medicare is already on an unsustainable path. It has made future promises that
far exceed expected revenues, based on the Medicare payroll tax and Medicare’s
share of general federal revenues. Ironically, Democrats, rather than Republicans,
were the first to formally acknowledge this fact. At the time Congress passed the
Affordable Care Act (ACA) creating Obamacare, the Medicare trustees estimated
the unfunded liability in the program at $89 trillion – stretching out indefinitely
into the future. Yet, in the next trustees’ report that figure had dropped to $37
trillion.
Think about that. When Barack Obama signed the ACA into law, he wiped away
$52 trillion of federal government debt. How did that happen? By theoretically
putting the government’s health care spending on a budget.
For the past 40 years real, per capita health care spending has been growing at
twice the rate of growth of real per capita income. That's not only true in this
country; it is about the average for the whole developed world. You don’t need to
be an accountant or a mathematician to know that if an expenditure item is
growing at twice the rate of growth of your income, it will crowd out more and
more of other spending – eventually taking up the entire pie.
To deal with this problem, there are three "global budgets" that Obamacare
promised to restrict three budgets to a rate of growth no greater than the rate of
real GDP growth per capita plus about ½ of a percent . These budgets are total
Medicare spending, Medicaid hospital spending and (after 2018) federal tax
subsidies in the health insurance exchanges.
If these budgets are binding, the burden of excess growth in health care spending
for the federal government will have been relieved – forever.
But here is the problem. The Obama administration only “solved” the problem
with pen and ink. It didn’t give the private sector any new tools to control costs. It
didn’t empower doctors or hospitals to practice medicine in a more efficient way.
There was an enforcement mechanism: An Independent Payment Advisory Board
(IPAB), tasked with the job of keeping spending below the cap – mainly by
recommending reductions in fees to doctors and hospitals. In a bipartisan budget
deal this year, Republicans in Congress abolished IPAB. But in their latest report,
the Medicare trustees imply they believe future administrations will still have the
power to enforce the spending cap.
That means that Medicare fees to providers will fall progressively behind private
sector fees through time. And that means one of two things must happen. Either
providers will respond to lower fees by providing less care to seniors or they will
shift costs to non-seniors in the form of higher fees, higher insurance premiums
and higher state and local taxes.
One way providers could cut costs is by providing fewer amenities. Hospital
patients could be in wards with, say, 4 or 6 beds instead of single-room occupancy
– the way hospitals used to be configured in this country and the way they still are
in some other countries. Hospital food could be meals-ready-to-eat (what combat
soldiers take into the field) rather than the fancy cuisine some facilities serve up
today.
Another way to cut costs is to deny seniors access to the most expensive care.
Writing in Health Affairs soon after the passage of the ACA, Harvard health
economist Joe Newhouse noted that many Medicaid enrollees are forced to seek
care at community health centers and safety net hospitals because Medicaid
payment rates are so low. He speculated that senior citizens may eventually face
the same plight under Obamacare.
A third way to cut costs is rationing by waiting. It is already common practice for
doctors to prioritize – seeing private-pay patients first, Medicare patients next
I am one of the nation’s leading thinkers on health policy. I am a Senior Fellow
at the Independent Institute and author of the widely acclaimed book, Priceless:
and Medicaid patients last. As in other countries with rationing problems, those
at the end of the line may never get seen.
But if everyone were in Medicare, wouldn’t seniors be on equal footing with nonseniors?
Since there would be no more cost shifting (no private patients to shift
costs to) the entire burden of spending cuts would fall on Medicare patients
themselves. Yet everyone in the medical world knows that older patients have
more difficult problems and take more time. That observation wouldn’t be lost on
practitioners in a system in which time is money and the payment for time keeps
getting smaller and smaller. Seniors would be less favored patients – just because
they are seniors.
However they are made, the future cuts in spending will be large. Writing at the
Health Affairs Blog, former Medicare trustee Thomas Saving and I proposed
several ways of thinking about what Medicare’s global budget will mean for
seniors. One way to think about these changes is to compare them to the average
amount Medicare was spending on enrollees prior to Obamacare. For 65-yearolds,
the forecasted reduction in spending is roughly equal to three years of
average Medicare spending. For 55-year-olds, the loss expected is the rough
equivalent of five years of benefits; and for 45-year-olds, it's almost nine years.
Another way to think about the Medicare spending reductions is to compare them
to an alternative reform that would have reduced spending by the same amount:
increasing the age of eligibility. The Medicare spending cuts called for under
Obamacare are the rough equivalent of raising the age of eligibility for 65-yearolds
from 65 to 68. They are the equivalent of making 55-year-olds wait until they
reach age 70 and 45-year-olds wait all the way to age 74!
Remember, these are spending cuts already called for under current law. They
will be much more severe if seniors have to compete with younger patients for
their care.
Curing the Healthcare Crisis. The Wall Street Journal calls me "the father of
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What You Need To Know About
Medicare For All, Part I
Policy
I offer market-based healthcare solutions.
John C. Goodman Contributor
i
Quite a few Democratic candidates for office this year are campaigning on the
idea of enrolling everyone in Medicare. It’s not just the left. A significant number
of doctors in the American Medical Association are for it. Public opinion polls
show that 70% of Americans like the idea.
Here are ten things you need to know.
1. 1. Medicare is not really government insurance.
Medicare card money
Almost everybody on the political left thinks that Medicare is a government plan
– one that is completely different from private insurance. Yet that view is wrong.
Although Medicare is largely funded with tax dollars, it has never been a strictly
government program. Medicare’s original benefit package copied a standard Blue
Cross plan that was common back in 1965. And Medicare has always been
privately administered – in many places by Blue Cross itself. That’s the same Blue
Cross that administers private insurance sold to non-seniors.
Moreover, in recent years, one-third of all seniors – and perhaps as many as half
of young seniors – are enrolled in plans offered by Humana, Cigna, UnitedHealth
care and other private insurers under the Medicare Advantage program. These
private plans are virtually indistinguishable from the private insurance nonseniors
have.
MORE FROM FORBES
2. The most successful part of Medicare is run by private insurers.
A study published in Health Affairs finds that the Medicare Advantage program
costs less and delivers higher quality care than traditional Medicare. Moreover,
within the Medicare Advantage program the most successful plans are the ones
administered by independent doctors’ associations. These plans are showing that
integrated care, coordinated care, medical homes and electronic information
sharing actually work – to keep patients healthier and improve medical
outcomes.
But there is nothing special about Medicare in this regard. These are private
sector innovations that are also available to non-seniors under contract with
private insurers
3. Medicare is often the last insurer to adopt innovations that
work.
In 2003, the benefit structure of Medicare looked pretty much the same as it did
40 years earlier. But in 1965, drugs were relatively inexpensive and their impact
on care relatively modest. Through time, they became more expensive. They also
became the most cost-effective medical therapy. When Medicare began covering
drugs (through Part D) in 2004 it started providing coverage that virtually all
private insurers and all employers had already offered years earlier.
Medicare has also been slow to adopt technologies that are becoming more
common in the private sector. It won’t pay for doctor consultations by phone,
email or Skype. It won’t pay for Uber-type house calls at nights and on weekends,
although the cost and the wait times are far below those of emergency room
visits. Nor will it pay for concierge doctor services, now available to seniors for as
little as $100 a month – despite the potential to improve access and reduce costs.
After years of foot dragging, Medicare now pays for telemedical services which
link hospital specialists with patients in rural areas. But it won’t pay for those
same services in urban areas – where most people live.
4. Medicare has wasted enormous sums on innovations that don’t
work.
Medicare has spent billions of dollars on pilot programs and demonstration
projects, trying to find ways of lowering costs and raising the quality of care.
Many of these efforts have focused on integrated care and coordinated care. Yet
instead of finding places in the health care system where these techniques seem
to work (e.g., private Medicare Advantage plans), Medicare set out instead to
reinvent the wheel. Three separate Congressional Budget Office reports
concluded that these efforts would be unsuccessful, and those predictions seem to
be vindicated by the test of time. Other efforts to change hospital behavior appear
to have raised costs rather than lower them.
5. Most seniors in conventional Medicare are participating in
stealth privatization, even though they are unaware of it.
By far the biggest recent change in Medicare has been the Obama
administration’s stealth program to privatize conventional Medicare and enroll
seniors in managed care programs called Accountable Care Organizations. At last
count, there were 32.7 million patients enrolled in an ACO, mainly people who
think they are participating in traditional Medicare.
The reason for the word “stealth” is that President Obama never used the words
“privatization” or “managed care” even though ACOs are mainly private entities
with essentially the same economic incentives as the hated HMOs of the 1980s
and 1990s. Not only did the Obama administration never tell seniors they were
participating in a grand experiment, it is illegal for an ACO to tell a senior he or
she is actually enrolled!
This experiment has largely been a failure. Without the tools routinely used by
Medicare Advantage plans (including the right to transparent communication
with patients) ACOs are neither saving money in the aggregate nor are they
improving the quality of care.
Democratic candidates for office often rail against the idea of privatizing
Medicare. AARP frequently parrots the same message. Yet most seniors who
think they are in traditional Medicare are actually in a private sector ACO. It was
Democrats who put them there with legislation that AARP supported!
6. There is nothing Medicare can do that employers and private
insurers can’t do.
For many years the Physicians for a National Health Program argued that a single
payer health insurer would be a monopsonist (a single buyer) in the market for
physicians’ services. It could therefore use this power to bargain down the fees it
pays to physicians. Putting aside the puzzle about why a doctors’ organization
would advocate putting the financial squeeze on themselves and their colleagues,
the whole idea turns out to be wrong.
Medicare doesn’t bargain with anyone. It simply puts out a price and doctors can
take it or leave it. But private insurers can do that too. In fact, they can put out a
take-it-or-leave-it price lower than what Medicare pays. That’s what has been
happening in the (Obamacare) health insurance exchanges, where the only
profitable insurers have tended to be Medicaid contractors who pay Medicaid
rates to providers.
Unfortunately, that means that enrollees are often denied access to the best
doctors and the best facilities.
Obamacare insurance, for example, excludes MD Anderson Center in Houston
(cited by US News as the best cancer care facility in the country), Southwestern
Medical Center in Dallas (rated as the top medical research center in the world by
the British journal Nature) and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Employers and private insurers could be far more aggressive in keeping prices
than they are today and far more aggressive than Medicare is. Canadians who
come to the United States for knee and hip replacements (because they get tired
of waiting in Canada) pay about half of what Americans typically pay. Employers
and private insurers could offer the same service to patients who are willing to
travel and to pay up front.
MediBid is a service that offers patients a national exchange where providers
submit competitive bids that are routinely less than what Medicare pays.
7. Medicare for all would be costly.
“Medicare for all” sounds attractive to some people because it suggests you are
going to get something for nothing. But, when pressed, even Bernie Sanders
admits there is no such thing as a free lunch
A study by Charles Blahous at the Mercatus Center estimates that Medicare for all
would cost $32.6 trillion over the next ten years. Other studies have been in the
same ballpark and they imply that we would need a 25% payroll tax. And that
assumes that doctors and hospitals provide the same amount of care they provide
today, even though they would be paid Medicare rates, which are about 40%
I am one of the nation’s leading thinkers on health policy. I am a Senior Fellow
at the Independent Institute and author of the widely acclaimed book, Priceless:
below what private insurance has been paying. Without those cuts in provider
payments, the needed payroll tax would be closer to 30%.
Of course, there would be savings on the other side of the ledger. People would no
longer have to pay private insurance premiums and out-of-pocket fees. In fact, for
the country as a whole this would largely be a financial wash – a huge
substitution of public payment for private payment.
But remember, in today’s world how much you and your employer spend on
health care is up to you and your employer. If the cost is too high, you can choose
to jettison benefits of marginal value and be more choosey about the doctors and
hospitals in your plan’s network. You could also take advantage of medical
tourism (traveling to other cities where the costs are lower and the quality is
higher) and phone, email and other telemedical innovations described above. The
premiums you pay today are voluntary and (absent Obamacare mandates) what
you buy with those premiums is a choice you and your employer are free to make.
With Medicare for all, you would have virtually no say in how costs are controlled
other than the fact that you would be one of several hundred million potential
voters.
Remember also that there is a reason why Obamacare is such a mess. The
Democrats in Congress convened special interests around a figurative table – the
drug companies, the insurance companies, the doctors, the hospitals, the device
manufacturers, big business, big labor, etc. – and gave each a piece of the
Obamacare pie in order to buy their political support.
As we show below, every single issue Obamacare had to contend with would be
front and center in any plan to replace Obamacare with Medicare for all. So, the
Democrats who gave us the last health care reform would be dealing with the
same issues and the same special interests the second time around.
It takes a great deal of faith to believe there would be much improvement.
Curing the Healthcare Crisis. The Wall Street Journal calls me "the father of
Health Savings Accounts." Modern He... MORE
Visit the Goodman Institute and follow me on Twitter.
16,322 views | Aug 30, 2018, 11:23am
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Thursday, September 13, 2018
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
For+the+last+three+years+I+have+been+developing+a+theory+about+the+left%26rsquo%3Bs+%26ldquo%3Bactivism%26rdquo%3B+culture.+But+I+have+failed+miserably+to+come+up+with+a+catchy+title+for+the+whole+thing.%0D%0A%0D%0AThank+you%2C+Sen.+Cory+Booker+%28D-NJ%29.+You+are+a+champ%21%0D%0A%0D...
For+the+last+three+years+I+have+been+developing+a+theory+about+the+left%26rsquo%3Bs+%26ldquo%3Bactivism%26rdquo%3B+culture.+But+I+have+failed+miserably+to+come+up+with+a+catchy+title+for+the+whole+thing.%0D%0A%0D%0AThank+you%2C+Sen.+Cory+Booker+%28D-NJ%29.+You+are+a+champ%21%0D%0A%0D...: The whole culture of left-wing
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
BOB WOODWARD HAS A TRAIL OF ACCURACY ISSUES THAT NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT
9:28 PM 09/10/2018
Peter Hasson | Reporter
Bob Woodward’s new book “Fear” presents a scathing depiction of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Woodward has a muddy history with a trail of allegations that he embellished the truth or otherwise misled his readers.
Media coverage of Woodward’s book has been largely positive and ignores Woodward’s controversial record.
Longtime journalist Bob Woodward’s best-selling new book, “Fear,” presents a scathing depiction of President Donald Trump and his ability to perform his duties as commander-in-chief.
While senior Trump officials including Secretary of Defense James Mattis have denied quotations attributed to them in the book, media coverage of “Fear” has been largely positive, emphasizing the 75-year-old Woodward’s experience and trustworthiness.
But that coverage has left out part of the story: repeated, credible charges — including from well-respected fellow journalists — that in previous books Woodward embellished the truth, made dubious bombshell claims or was otherwise misleading.
Woodward’s former editor at the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, though publicly complimentary of Woodward, privately doubted some of the more dramatic elements of Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate-era bestseller, “All The President’s Men.”
Bradlee and Woodward’s former assistant at the Post, Jeff Himmelman, revealed Bradlee’s nagging doubts in a 2012 biography of the longtime editor.
Bradlee gave Himmelman full access to his files, which revealed that details about Woodward’s relationship with infamous Watergate source “Deep Throat” gnawed at Bradlee years later. Details such as Woodward communicating with Deep Throat by placing a flag in a potted plant on his balcony, or their dozens of shadowy garage meetings.
“You know I have a little problem with Deep Throat,” Bradlee said to an assistant in a 1990 interview that he originally intended to use for a memoir but which remained private until Himmelman published his book.
“Did that potted [plant] incident ever happen? … and meeting in some garage. One meeting in the garage? Fifty meetings in the garage? I don’t know how many meetings in the garage … There’s a residual fear in my soul that that isn’t quite straight.”
Himmelman wrote that Woodward, fearful of the truth coming out, tried to pressure him into removing the damaging information from the book.
Himmelman’s book also revealed that Woodward and Bernstein misled the public for decades about another Watergate source, known as source “Z.”
“For four decades, Carl and Bob have insisted that the grand jurors they contacted had given them no information. For four decades, that story endured, as it was replayed in interviews and reread in library copies of All The President’s Men, and as Woodward and Bernstein and Bradlee became a holy trinity of newspaper journalism,” Himmelman wrote in a New York Magazine excerpt.
“But, according to the memo, it didn’t appear to be true: Z was no mystic; she was a grand juror in disguise, and had apparently broken the law by talking. Woodward and Bernstein had always denied it—in 1974, and as recently as 2011,” Himmelman wrote.
Woodward and Bernstein’s book described Z as someone “in a position to have considerable knowledge of the secret activities of the White House and [the Committee to Re-elect the President]” and quotes her saying: “My boss called it a whitewash.”
That was misleading for two reasons, Himmelman showed.
First, the second half of that quote (which Woodward and Bernstein left out) was: “and he [the boss] doesn’t even have the facts.”
Second, what Z’s boss thought about the case was far less relevant if her day job wasn’t directly related to the Nixon administration.
Woodward and Bernstein’s account “leads the reader to think some wise man of the Nixon administration, Z’s sage boss, was troubled by all the criminality there,” then-Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen, a renowned Watergate historian, noted in a 2012 piece for The Atlantic. “It’s beyond misleading.”
Former FBI Director L.Patrick Gray III’s notes, published for the first time in a 2008 book by his son Ed Gray, similarly challenged Woodward and Bernstein’s account of Deep Throat.
Former FBI agent Mark Felt took credit for being Deep Throat in 2005 but Gray, cross-referencing his father’s FBI files and four of Woodward’s notes on Deep Throat at the University of Texas, argued that some information Woodward attributed to Deep Throat couldn’t plausibly have come from Felt.
“There is now convincing evidence that ‘Deep Throat’ was indeed a fabrication. Bob Woodward has provided it himself,” Gray wrote in the book, a copy of which was reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“‘Deep Throat’ could not be the single individual Woodward always claimed him to be” but instead was a “composite fiction,” Gray charged.
Gray’s book “demolishes forever the notion that Deep Throat was Mark Felt alone. Others have already made inroads on this subject, but the use of Woodward’s own typed notes makes the judgment final,” Rosen wrote in a June 2008 review in American Spectator.
“Indeed, Ed Gray even identified one of the other sources Woodward has been protecting with the Deep Throat umbrella for all these years—and got that individual to admit as much, on the record. Only Woodward, who cooperated with the Gray project until the questions became uncomfortable, is left clinging to the fictions of All the President’s Men,'” Rosen wrote.
Woodward’s record is marred by similar accusations of misleading his readers.
“Wired,” Woodward’s 1984 biography of deceased actor John Belushi, was harshly criticized both when it came out and in the years since then.
“There were certainly things that he just got patently wrong,” Belushi friend Dan Aykroyd wrote. “He painted a portrait of John that was really inaccurate — certain stories in there that just weren’t true and never happened.”
Author Tanner Colby, in the course of researching and writing his own Belushi biography, said he found instance after instance in which Woodward’s account was misleading.
“The simple truth of ‘Wired’ is that Bob Woodward, deploying all of the talent and resources for which he is famous, produced something that is a failure as journalism,” Colby wrote in a 2013 Salon article.
“And when you imagine Woodward using the same approach to cover secret meetings about drone strikes and the budget sequester and other issues of vital national importance, well, you have to stop and shudder,” he concluded.
A bombshell claim in “Veil,” Woodward’s 1987 book on the CIA, has long been a source of controversy.
Woodward claimed in the book that he was the sole witness to a dramatic deathbed confession from former CIA Director William Casey.
Casey, as he lay dying in Georgetown University hospital, jerked up in bed and confessed to Woodward that he knew about the Reagan-era Iran-Contra deal, Woodward claimed.
“People close to Casey at the time said he couldn’t even speak, much less jerk his head up. They said details of Woodward’s account, such as the positioning of Casey’s hospital bed, did not even remotely match Woodward’s description. Casey’s daughter said the encounter never happened,” Tod Robberson, now an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote in a 2013 Dallas Morning News column.
“Kevin Shipp, who served in Casey’s security detail at the hospital, wrote in 2010 that there were security guards at Casey’s door 24/7, and nobody got past without their approval. Woodward tried to get in, but he was turned away, Shipp stated. Woodward disputes the 24/7 claim,” Robberson noted.
The Casey dispute made a Politico list of six “Bob Woodward controversies” in 2012.
Also on the list: Woodward’s description of former President Ronald Reagan’s recovery from an assassination attempt in 1981. Reagan’s doctor later said Woodward’s description of a frail, fragile Reagan was entirely inconsistent with reality, Politico noted.
A disputed Woodward bombshell about former Supreme Court Justice William Brennan made the list as well.
Brennan voted what he thought was the wrong way on a case in order to ingratiate himself to fellow Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Woodward and co-author Scott Armstrong charged in “The Brethren,” their 1979 book on the Supreme Court.
Former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis shredded Woodward and Armstrong’s accusation in The New York Review of Books.
“It makes a serious charge without serious evidence—almost offhandedly, in two pages. It gets facts wrong. It gives the impression of relying on a conversation between Brennan and a law clerk that the law clerks of that term say never took place. If the passage was not meant to rely on such, a conversation with a clerk, then it grossly and deliberately misleads the reader,” Lewis wrote.
Woodward and Armstrong’s treatment of the case “leaves doubts not only about the authors’ understanding but about their scrupulousness,” Lewis concluded.
Pulitzer-winning former New York Times reporter Seymour “Sy” Hersh wrote in his memoir — which came out in June — that he’s “liked and respected Bob ever since” chasing the Watergate story together.
But that claim didn’t survive a fact-check when Rosen reviewed Hersh’s book in an August 23 piece for The National Interest. Like Bradlee, Hersh privately questioned Woodward’s work.
Rosen obtained a 1992 phone transcript showing Hersh expressing his embarrassment that Woodward was considered a peer. “It hurts me to believe that he’s in my fucking profession,” Hersh reportedly said.
Woodward’s alleged trouble with the truth resurfaced again in 2013 when he accused an Obama administration official, Gene Sperling, of trying to intimidate him over email.
Woodward was slammed in the media after the Obama administration released the tame email exchange.
Woodward “made a fool of himself,” Robberson opined in his Morning News column, mourning the fall of a journalist who once “was a god” to him.
Alex Seitz-Wald, now a reporter for NBC News, described the exaggeration at the time as “just the latest questionable assertion” from Woodward that “is reigniting discussion as to the veracity of other claims he’s made.”
“The important question becomes this: If Woodward, who has generated best-seller after best-seller over many decades based heavily on anonymous sources, can’t accurately convey a conversation with an email trail, should we trust the anonymous sources in the rest of his reporting?” asked Seitz-Wald, whose article in Salon was titled: “Bernstein’s truthiness problem.”
Woodward, who did not return TheDCNF’s request for comment, has benefitted from a media makeover ahead of his latest book.
“‘Fear’ is an important book, not only because it raises serious questions about the president’s basic fitness for the office but also because of who the author is,” Jill Abramson wrote in a review for The Washington Post.
Woodward’s “work has been factually unassailable,” Abramson declared. She did not mention any of the above controversies surrounding Woodward’s previous work.
“Mr. Trump and other administration officials have attacked the Woodward book. They will have trouble impugning his credibility,” the Post’s editorial board asserted.
USA Today columnist Alicia Shephard emphasized Woodward’s commitment to truth in a piece defending “Fear.” Woodward’s “quest for the truth derives from an insatiable curiosity,” Shephard raved.
CNN’s Brian Stelter distinguished Woodward from author Michael Wolff and former Trump aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman, both of whom published scathing accounts of the Trump White House that did not hold up to scrutiny.
“Woodward is different,” wrote Stelter, host of a CNN show called “Reliable Sources.” (RELATED: How The Media Mainstreamed A Democratic Conspiracy Theory)
“As the CNN team of reporters who read ‘Fear’ in advance wrote on Tuesday, ‘his reporting comes with the credibility of a long and storied history that separates this book from previous efforts on Trump,'” Stelter added.
He mentioned none of Woodward’s past controversies.
Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson
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Read A Pile Of Top Nazis Talking About How They Love Leftist Marxism
Read A Pile Of Top Nazis Talking About How They Love Leftist Marxism: From the moment they enter the political fray, young right-wingers are told, ‘You own the Nazis.’ But it’s all a lie, a smear tactic.
Monday, September 10, 2018
Saturday, September 8, 2018
Cory Booker’s Commodus Moment - American Greatness
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Friday, September 7, 2018
Flashback: Obama prosecuted staff leakers, gave lie-detector tests, ‘paranoid’
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/flashback-obama-prosecuted-staff-leakers-gave-lie-detector-tests-paranoid
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%26quot%3BIt%26%2339%3Bs+very+depressing.%26nbsp%3B%26nbsp%3BYou+want+to+read+a+depressing+book%2C+this+is+it%2C%26quot%3B+said+one+critic+of+a+book+by+Bob+Woodward.%26nbsp%3B%26nbsp%3B%26quot%3BIt%26%2339%3Bs+a+sad%2C+horrible+story+with+all+the+sordid+details+that+I+guess+people+will+just%2C+you...
%26quot%3BIt%26%2339%3Bs+very+depressing.%26nbsp%3B%26nbsp%3BYou+want+to+read+a+depressing+book%2C+this+is+it%2C%26quot%3B+said+one+critic+of+a+book+by+Bob+Woodward.%26nbsp%3B%26nbsp%3B%26quot%3BIt%26%2339%3Bs+a+sad%2C+horrible+story+with+all+the+sordid+details+that+I+guess+people+will+just%2C+you...: Bob Woodward is perhaps the leading example of media self-deception.
[Shared Post] Funny Friday
Timothy Van Eck (thevanx@gmail.com) thinks you may be interested in the following post:
Funny Friday
http://hardnoxandfriends.com/2018/09/07/funny-friday-106/
Funny Friday
http://hardnoxandfriends.com/2018/09/07/funny-friday-106/
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Why Life Begins at Conception
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwzjWRMDpqg
Scientists Attest To Life Beginning At Conception
By Randy Alcorn
Some of the world’s most prominent scientists and physicians testified to a U.S. Senate committee that human life begins at conception:
A United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee invited experts to testify on the question of when life begins. All of the quotes from the following experts come directly from the official government record of their testimony.1
Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania, stated:
“I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception…. I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life….
I am no more prepared to say that these early stages [of development in the womb] represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty…is not a human being. This is human life at every stage.”
Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, was the discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Down syndrome. Dr. LeJeune testified to the Judiciary Subcommittee, “after fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being.” He stated that this “is no longer a matter of taste or opinion,” and “not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.” He added, “Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.”
Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic: “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”
Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School: “It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive…. It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception…. Our laws, one function of which is to help preserve the lives of our people, should be based on accurate scientific data.”
Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School: “The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter—the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political, or economic goals.”
A prominent physician points out that at these Senate hearings, “Pro-abortionists, though invited to do so, failed to produce even a single expert witness who would specifically testify that life begins at any point other than conception or implantation. Only one witness said no one can tell when life begins.”2
Many other prominent scientists and physicians have likewise affirmed with certainty that human life begins at conception:
Ashley Montague, a geneticist and professor at Harvard and Rutgers, is unsympathetic to the prolife cause. Nevertheless, he affirms unequivocally, “The basic fact is simple: life begins not at birth, but conception.”3
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, internationally known obstetrician and gynecologist, was a cofounder of what is now the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). He owned and operated what was at the time the largest abortion clinic in the western hemisphere. He was directly involved in over sixty thousand abortions.
Dr. Nathanson’s study of developments in the science of fetology and his use of ultrasound to observe the unborn child in the womb led him to the conclusion that he had made a horrible mistake. Resigning from his lucrative position, Nathanson wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that he was deeply troubled by his “increasing certainty that I had in fact presided over 60,000 deaths.”4
In his film, “The Silent Scream,” Nathanson later stated, “Modern technologies have convinced us that beyond question the unborn child is simply another human being, another member of the human community, indistinguishable in every way from any of us.” Dr. Nathanson wrote Aborting America to inform the public of the realities behind the abortion rights movement of which he had been a primary leader.5 At the time Dr. Nathanson was an atheist. His conclusions were not even remotely religious, but squarely based on the biological facts.
Dr. Landrum Shettles was for twenty-seven years attending obstetrician-gynecologist at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. Shettles was a pioneer in sperm biology, fertility, and sterility. He is internationally famous for being the discoverer of male- and female-producing sperm. His intrauterine photographs of preborn children appear in over fifty medical textbooks. Dr. Shettles states, I oppose abortion. I do so, first, because I accept what is biologically manifest—that human life commences at the time of conception—and, second, because I believe it is wrong to take innocent human life under any circumstances. My position is scientific, pragmatic, and humanitarian. 6
The First International Symposium on Abortion came to the following conclusion:
The changes occurring between implantation, a six-week embryo, a six-month fetus, a one-week-old child, or a mature adult are merely stages of development and maturation. The majority of our group could find no point in time between the union of sperm and egg, or at least the blastocyst stage, and the birth of the infant at which point we could say that this was not a human life.7
The Official Senate report on Senate Bill 158, the “Human Life Bill,” summarized the issue this way:
Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.8
Footnotes:
1 Report, Subcommittee on Separation of Powers to Senate Judiciary Committee S-158, 97th Congress, 1st Session 1981.
2Landrum Shettles and David Rorvik, Rites of Life: The Scientific Evidence of Life Before Birth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983), 113.
3 Ashley Montague, Life Before Birth (New York: Signet Books, 1977), vi.
4Bernard N. Nathanson, “Deeper into Abortion,” New England Journal of Medicine 291 (1974): 1189Ð90.
5Bernard Nathanson, Aborting America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979).
6Shettles and Rorvik, Rites of Life, 103.
7John C. Willke, Abortion Questions and Answers (Cincinnati, OH: Hayes Publishing, 1988), 42.
8Report, Subcommittee on Separation of Powers to Senate Judiciary Committee S-158, 97th Congress, 1st Session 1981, 7.
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