November 03, 2009

Sticker Shock: Cost of Government-Rationed Health Care Jumps to $ 1,200,000,000,000

The cost of the government-rationed of health care has exploded 33%, even before coming to a vote:


The health care bill headed for a vote in the House this week costs $1.2 trillion or more over a decade, according to numerous Democratic officials and figures contained in an analysis by congressional budget experts, far higher than the $900 billion cited by President Barack Obama as a price tag for his reform plan.

While the Congressional Budget Office has put the cost of expanding coverage in the legislation at roughly $1 trillion, Democrats added billions more on higher spending for public health, a reinsurance program to hold down retiree health costs, payments for preventive services and more.

Keep in mind these are the purposefully low-balled estimates. Invariably government-mangled programs end up costing ten to twenty times as much as proposed once implemented.

The cost of government-rationed health care has ballooned from $900,000,000,000 to $1,200,000,000,000—over $300 billion—in less than a week, without ever leaving paper... just imagine how bad it will get if it ever becomes law.

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November 02, 2009

Bachmann: Storm the Gates

Firebrand Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is mad as Hell, and she doesn't want you to take it from Congress any more.


"The American people spoke loud and clear at town hall meetings all across the country throughout August. But, it would appear that Congress didn't hear a word they had to say. The Democrats' latest health care proposal unveiled late last week may be packaged a little differently, but itÂ’s the same old bad bill as before.

"This bill is a trillion-dollar, budget-busting, government takeover of our health care system. It will put bureaucrats between people and their health care. It will lead to rationed care, hurting the most vulnerable amongst us first. It will break the bank, leaving our children to pay the bill with diminished freedoms and dwindling prosperity.

"The American people need to stand up again and make sure that Congress hears them this time. Speaker Pelosi is putting her bill on fast track to a vote – and it remains to be seen if the House will even get a chance to vote on the commonsense Republican alternatives. The people need to make a House Call on Washington this week and tell their Representatives to vote no to a government take-over of one-fifth of our economy. This is gangster government at its worst.

"I urge all Americans to come to Washington this Thursday. Come and meet up with your Representative and tell them that you want to control your health care."

"Gangster government at its worst."

That's putting it mildly.

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"Land of the Greed and Home of the Slave."

Jeremiah Wright, Obama's mentor of two decades, speaks:


A new video of Jeremiah Wright has surfaced, showing Barack Obama's pastor of 20 years praising Marxism and discussing his ties to communists in El Salvador and Nicaragua and the Libyan government. Equally important, Wright is being introduced in the video by Robert W. McChesney, co-founder of Free Press, an organization which has come under scrutiny for its links to the Obama Administration and dedication to the transformation and control of the private media in the U.S.

In an article in the socialist Monthly Review, "Journalism, Democracy, and Class Struggle," McChesney declared, "Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism."

In the video, which captures Wright's appearance at a September 17, 2009, anniversary celebration of Monthly Review, Wright said that while the "corporate media" provide a "binary lens" of the world, in such terms as "communist versus Christian," Monthly Review offers what it calls "no-nonsense Marxism."

He added: "You dispel all the negative images we have been programmed to conjure up with just the mention of that word socialism or Marxism."

He called America "land of the greed and home of the slave."



It's a nice Republic we have, if we can keep it.

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D'oh! CNN Falls for Long-Debunked Kilimanjaro Global Warming Claim

This is CNN:


The ice and snow that cap majestic Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are vanishing before our eyes.

If current conditions persist, climate change experts say, Kilimanjaro's world-renowned glaciers, which have covered Africa's highest peak for centuries, will be gone within the next two decades.

"In a very real sense, these glaciers are being decapitated from the surface down," said Lonnie Thompson, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. Thompson is co-author of a study on Kilimanjaro published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study's authors blame the disappearing ice on increases in global temperatures and diminished snowfall at Kilimanjaro's summit.

Previous studies of Kilimanjaro's glaciers have relied on aerial photographs to measure the rate of the retreating ice. For this new survey, scientists climbed the mountain and drilled deep into the glaciers to measure the volume of the ice fields atop the 19,331-foot (5,892-meter) peak.



And this is reality:


"Kilimanjaro is a grossly overused mis-example of the effects of climate change," said University of Washington climate scientist Philip Mote, co-author of an article in the July/August issue of American Scientist magazine.

Mote is concerned that critics will try to use the article to debunk broader climate-change trends.

He hastens to add that global warming is, indeed, responsible for the fact that nearly every other glacier around the globe is melting away. Kilimanjaro just happens to be the worst possible case study.

Rising nearly four miles from the plains of eastern Tanzania, Kilimanjaro has seen its glaciers decline steadily for well over a century — since long before humans began pumping large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, Mote points out.

Most of the world's glaciers didn't begin their precipitous declines until the 1970s, when measurable global warming first appeared.

Also, recent data from Kilimanjaro show temperatures on the 19,340-foot volcano never rise above freezing. So melting triggered by a warmer atmosphere can't be the reason the small summit ice sheet is retreating about 3 feet a year, said Georg Kaser, co-author of the new article and a glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Man-made global warming (creating glacial melt) cannot be a factor in a glacier disappearing if the temperature of the glacier never comes close to rising above freezing (which is underlined by the fact that the global temperature has been declining since 1998).What is far more likely is that constantly lower amounts of participation over the past century mean that the glaciers are in a natural state of decline, and state they have been in since at least 1912.

What is causing the decline?


Instead, melt on Kilimanjaro is caused by sublimation, which turns ice directly into water vapor at below-freezing temperatures—essentially the glacier gets a giant case of moisture-sapping freezer burn.

Thompson has been beating this drum since 2002, but the fact remains that his claim that man-made global warming in the cause of the glacial retreat is a farce.

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No Obligation to Indecency

As human beings living in tribes and later large social structures of cities, states, and nations, we agree (implicitly or expressly) to abide by rules and laws. These agreements are meant to establish order and security in what otherwise would be a chaotic and dangerous world.

As part of the social contract of our democratic Republic, we follow the laws set down to us by the House of Representatives and the Senate, deliberative bodies elected from and by the people.

But laws and social contracts are not immutable or ironclad, especially when they invalidate liberty and justice, and infringe upon the inalienable rights of man.

When the elected become corrupt, and instead focus on using their offices to build more power for themselves instead of working for the betterment of the society, then they have violated the sacred trust of population.

There are various articles of legislation currently being manipulated by the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives, Senate, and White House that are an affront to the ideals this nation was founded upon.

It was during such a failure of the social contract between the people and their distant government that these enduring words were authored:


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such words and such a dissolution of the contract between the government and the governed should never be entered into lightly or in haste; even the best outcome of such a conflict stands to wreck the surviving nation while the echoes of that decision reverberate, and the distinct probability exists that the resulting congress may result in an amalgamation no better than the last, with far too many broken bonds and bodies to show for an enfeebled change.

Nor is there any reason to suspect that the existing social remedy of the ballot box is too far corrupted to cease having power, despite the best attempts at collusion between power brokers, nationalized community organizations, and special interests.

But history has shown us that ever society has a breaking point where the State becomes more powerful than the people it represents, and laws are thereafter written for the benefit of the government instead of the governed. This we call tyranny.

There should be very little doubt at all that the current Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, represents the essence of that tyrannical impulse. She leads men and women who have never trusted in the resourcefulness of their fellow man, and never understood that a man's dreams and aspirations are a far more powerful and driving force for success than any diktat. They represent law that makes men subservient to the state, and ultimately to themselves.

Likewise, Harry Reid, the present Senate Majority Leader, has little use for true social justice, just a thirst for social control and obedient, docile constituencies. His faction schemes and plots, disemboweling individual liberties and disinterring pogroms that should have long ago been discarded "on the ash heap of history" as one of our most eloquent leaders recounted in a reclaimed phrase.

But perhaps no one has less faith in the promise of America than our current President, Barack Obama.

Whether his vision of what this nation could accomplish and what it should represent was tarnished in a youth spent living in a foreign nation, or was twisted in a transformational experience that saw him aligned with murderous terrorists and race-obsessed radicals is really of little consequence.

He has shown himself to be a friend of radicals and an alien to the core beliefs of our nation, ready to defend our enemies at a moment's notice, propping up dictatorships, and caring more about the welfare of terrorists than pregnant women, but that is his right as an elected official, and our curse for listening to his oratory instead of discerning his lack of substance, character, and decency.

But our obligation to the law and the lawmakers is not a one-way social contract.

If our lawmakers abandon the founding principles of this nation, and use their power to obfuscate, deceive, bully and strip basic rights away from the people, then they are forfeit to the social contract, even if they have managed to "abide" by the laws they've written in support of the state.

Ultimately, laws are only lawful if the govern find them fair and justified. All else is dogma.

And so when power-mad legislatures and executives use direct lies and emotional rhetoric in order to deceive their constituencies in an attempt at tyranny that serves to increase their power while undermining the principles that has enabled this government of the people, for the people and by the people, we owe them no more allegiance.

One may even begin to speculate on whether we owe them civility for their transgressions, which amount to a fundamental betrayal of our social contract as Americans.

Unlike other nations and states in times both past and present, we have the possibility of correcting our mistakes and removing the disloyal via the ballot instead of the barrel of a gun.

Let us hope that our elected officials recognize, however, that our patience is not finite, nor our obligation to bear their indecent assault on our liberties unlimited.

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Matrix Producer to Film Muhamad Flick

Obviously, Roman Polanski must direct.

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They Need a New Name: How About "Organizing for Identity Theft?"

Big Brother Democrats aren't just watching you, they're handing out your personal identification to their cronies in a massive invasion of personal privacy (h/t Instapundit).


The red boxes are around questions asking for the person's e-mail address and what time of day they plan to vote.

So, now yours truly, a perfect stranger from outside of New York's 23rd Congressional District, knows the Name, Phone Number, Age, and Gender of 25 residents of NY-23.

Because the e-mail I received is part of a large orchestrated campaign, an undetermined but far from small number of perfect strangers predominantly from outside of New York's 23rd Congressional District will know this information about hundreds — if not thousands — of residents of NY-23.

Additionally, if I were to carry out the calls (which I of course will not), I would have the cell phone number, e-mail address, and planned voting time of any person in the group of 25 who responds to my request for that information.

It doesn't take much imagination to see what could happen, but I guess I need to draw a picture for old Mitch:

  • With a person's e-mail addy and cell number, a spammer can put them on every junk mail and calling list there is.
  • Thanks to easily available Internet phone directories, criminals can learn where these people live. By asking a few additional questions, they can learn who lives alone. If they also learn when they won't be home (i.e., out voting) and live reasonably close, they can steal them blind while they're away.
  • Even more scary, a violent criminal can use answers to OFA's official questions combined with other information they might learn through probing to commit violent acts when these people ARE home.

Not just organized, but organizing for crime... that's the Chicago Way.


* * *

On a more serious note, I've been following the NY-23 situation, but felt others in the media and blogosphere have covered it in sufficient detail that any additional "me, too" commentary was superfluous.

That said, it seems that the Conservative Party was right to run Doug Hoffman against RINO Dede Scuzafavor (or whatever her name is) and Democrat Bill Owens, which was clearly revealed when Scuzzy threw her support behind the Democratic candidate despite receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars (and perhaps as much a sa cool $1 million) in financial support from the Republican Party. Needless to say, I think she'll find the GOP's purse strings with be cut off in her next local election, and I suspect her official transition to the Democrat party will be coming soon (if not immediately, if rumors that she is doing robo-calls for the Democrat are true).

The effort of the national DNC and associated activist groups in this race is fascinating considering this is a race for a one-year term. Obviously, they are far more concerned about the trendsetting and symbolism of a very conservative candidate besting the squishy GOP moderates they would much rather prefer to face, not to mention the Democratic candidate that they want to win. And besting them handily he is: the most recent polls show the conservative Hoffman dominating the race over Owens 54%-38%.

If Hoffman wins in a dominating fashion as the polls are suggesting, it could potentially ignite a trend of conservative candidates to be fielded against Republican moderates in primaries, not with the expectation that the resulting conservative versus Democrat race would amount to a protest vote, but with the expectation that the conservative candidate may actually stand a far better chance of actually getting elected than the squishy RINO or the Democrat. That has to terrify not just an Obama White House worried that their brand is rapidly becoming an albatross, but status quo-invested moderate Republicans as well.

Such a turn of events would only embolden the grass roots conservative movement, but we'll have to see if the election is a bellwether of a momentum shift, or an endpoint. As Glenn Reynolds notes, it isn't just the election, but what happens afterward that matters.

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Riddle Me This...

Why is it that grass roots activist opponents of the President are gleefully derided as "teabaggers," when it is the subservient liberal special interest groups that worshipped him up until the election—only to be cast aside afterwards with one broken policy promise after another— are the ones left with a bad taste in their mouths?

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Explosion at Bragg OP Kills Civilian

If I recall correctly, we're in the middle of Robin Sage, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how exploding civilians could be related to a military training exercise.


An explosion on a Fort Bragg observation point killed a civilian Friday, Fort Bragg spokeswoman Jackie Thomas said Sunday.

Two civilians were in the area when the blast went off at 12:15 p.m., Thomas said.

One was killed, the other was not injured. The names of the victims were not released. Thomas said they were not Army employees.

It sounds like these civilians were probably not supposed to be there, but the statement is so antiseptic that we can't be sure exactly what is going on.

I'm going to recall an old NCIS episode and wonder if they might have been hunting scrap metal on a bombing range and set off unexploded ordnance.

Update: When I'm good, I'm good. Score one for Darwin:



Fort Bragg officials say a civilian killed in an explosion at the North Carolina Army post was scavenging for scrap metal when he stepped on a round and it exploded.

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October 30, 2009

Propping Up The Dead

In a more barbaric portion of our nation's past, it was not uncommon to prop up the bodies of the newsworthy dead to take pictures with them. It is a vile act still practiced by some crude thugs in one particularly callous and self-serving sect. You know them as the Democrats.

Whether tripping over each other to use caskets as a lectern at the funerals of a Wellstone or a Kennedy, there is never a moment too solemn for liberals to soil if the slightest political opportunity presents itself.

Our odious President Barack Obama is as feckless and sociopathic as his political brethren, and carted up a helicopter full of photographers and journalists to take to Dover Air Force Base. He wanted to use the bodies of those who died in Afghanistan as a photo op, in a move so blatantly calculated that even the New York Times was forced to comment on it.


A small contingent of reporters and photographers accompanied Mr. Obama to Dover, where he arrived at 12:34 a.m. aboard Marine One. He returned to the South Lawn of the White House at 4:45 a.m.

<Â…>

The images and the sentiment of the president's five-hour trip to Delaware were intended by the White House to convey to the nation that Mr. Obama was not making his Afghanistan decision lightly or in haste.

Predictably, the Times edited away the offending truth, but no before it was already documented.

Only one family of 18 would allow Obama his cheap theatrics. 14 suffered through a meeting with the President and his surrounding entourage during what should have been a solemn moment of reclamation. Four families, apparently, were able to escape the White House-orchestrated circus entirely.

But liberals rotted to the core and rooted in the past instinctively returned to their traditional primal howl, with something called a Blue Texan at firedoglake using Obama's irreverent, calculated photo op to attack—who else?—George Bush.

At Blackfive, a real American, a soldier who understands the solemnity of service and loss, explains to the jackals:


Turning a solemn occasion into a photo op that becomes about you is not respectful, it is sorry. President Bush knew that and chose to show his respect in private to the people who really matter, the Gold Star families.

President Bush met with families individually and in groups, crying with them, praying with them, often with tears streaming down his cheeks. Those moments were private and respectful.

The left wants the bodies of the fallen stacked into a podium, cameras flashing, reporters intruding upon the dead and grieving so that they can project a false sincerity.

We're forced to ask: if the 18th family had refused to have their son's casket photographed, would Obama have shown up at all?

Sadly, I suspect we all know the answer.

Update: Like most liberals, Blue Texan can't understand why Obama's photo-op the other night in Dover was so loathsome.

Her sophomoric response an attempts to invokes a version of the "your guy did it too!" defense, trying to hide Obama's craven cynicism behind President Reagan's 1983 visit to Andrews Air Force Base to meet the bodies of Americans killed in a terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.

Context, of course, is paramount.

Reagan's visit—as a transcript of the radio address Blue Texan cited attests—was part of the government response to a significant terror attack directed at one of our embassies. Reagan's purpose was to unite American resolve in support of freedom and liberty:


More than ever, we're committed to giving the people of Lebanon the chance they deserve to lead normal lives, free from violence and free from the presence of all unwanted foreign forces on their soil. And we remain committed to the Lebanese Government's recovery of full sovereignty throughout all its territory.

<...>

The scenes of senseless tragedy in Beirut this week will remain etched in our memories forever. But along with the tragedy, there were inspiring moments of heroism. We will not forget the pictures of Ambassador Dillon and his staff, Lebanese as well as Americans, many of them swathed in bandages, bravely searching the devastated embassy for their colleagues and for other innocent victims.

We will not forget the image of young marines gently draping our nation's flag over the broken body of one of their fallen comrades. We will not forget their courage and compassion, and we will not forget their willingness to sacrifice even their lives for the service of their country and the cause of peace.

Yes, we Americans can be proud of these fine men and women. And we can be even prouder that our country has been playing such a unique and indispensable role in the Middle East, a role no other single nation could play. When the countries of the region want help in bringing peace, we're the ones they've turned to. That's because they trust us, because they know that America is both strong and just, both decent and dedicated. Even in the shadow of this terrible tragedy in Beirut, that is something to remember and draw heart from. It is also something to be true to.

I know I speak for all Americans when I reaffirm our unshakeable commitment to our country's most precious heritage—serving the cause of peace and freedom in the world. What better monument than that could we build for those who gave their all that others might live in peace.

President Reagan's visit was meant to inspire a nation.

President Obama's visit was meant to salvage his reputation.

Big difference.

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The Class of the Liberal Elite

Über liberal Gore Vidal takes the disgusting practice of blaming the victim to the extreme, outrageously calling the 13-year-old rape victim that Roman Polanski drugged and brutalized, "a hooker."

Quick, someone award him a Nobel Prize for Literature.

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October 29, 2009

Paranormal Taxivity



via Hot Air.

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The Taxpayer Option: 1,990 Pages

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

A bill can only get this bloated when Congress isn't conscientious enough, or diligent enough, to craft concise and thoughtful legislation that accomplishes a specific task with a clear purpose and logical mechanisms for implementation and enforcement.

This is a trainwreck, authored by the lazy and incompetent, and should be aborted instead of the children the bill would require taxpayers to kill.

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Ghosts of Campaigns Past

Earlier this week I read and commented upon Special Forces Major Jim Gant's proposal for winning the Afghan war, One Tribe At a Time (PDF). Gan't proposla was based upon his highly successful engagement as the leader of a Special Forces A-team that won the confidence of and became regarded as part of a Pushtun tribe.

Gant's approach suggests using smaller teams of highly-trained and highly-supported soldiers and have them assimilate into Afghanistan's Pashtun tribes to combat the Taliban with minimal but immediate assistance, both monetary and military, as needed.

David Adams and Ann Marlowe reach a similar conclusion in the Wall Street Journal today, noting that more troops applied improperly actually seems to make attempts at providing security counterproductive:


We saw how this could work in the Tani district of Khost starting in 2007. By assisting an ANA company—with a platoon of American paratroopers, a civil affairs team from the U.S.-led Provincial Reconstruction Team, the local Afghan National Police, and a determined Afghan subgovernor named Badi Zaman Sabari—we secured the district despite its long border with Pakistan.

Raids by the paratroopers under the leadership of Lt. Col. Scott Custer were extremely rare because the team had such good relations with the tribes that they would generally turn over any suspect. These good tribal relations were strengthened further by meeting the communities' demands for a new paved road, five schools, and a spring water system that supplies 12,000 villagers.

Yet security has deteriorated in Khost, despite increases of U.S. troops in mid-2008. American strategy began to focus more on chasing the insurgents in the mountains instead of securing the towns and villages where most Khostis live.

The insurgents didn't stick around to get shot when they saw the American helicopters coming. But the villagers noticed when the roads weren't built on time and the commanders never visited.

It doesn't take much more more than a scan of the current headlines to know that the application of the current strategy is not working. We also have multiple sources with boots-on-the-ground experience suggesting what certainly sounds like the same approach to a much more intimate, smaller-scale engagement, with real-world results supporting their positions.

No doubt General McCrystal has his reasons for wanting 40,000 troops, just as Joe Biden has his own (quite daft) reasons for wanting to fight a drone war.

But generals and politicians have historically had problems correctly fighting the war in front of them, haunted by ghosts of campaigns past.

Let's hope our current commanders are capable of avoiding that trap.

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SOCOM SCAR Update

The FN SCAR (Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle) that has been deployed in small numbers with U.S. Special Forces will finish an initial deployment in December. Jane's is reporting that a much larger follow-on order of 15,000 5.56 SCAR-L(ight) and 5,000 7.62 SCAR-H(eavy) modular rifles is expected to follow in 2010.

Jason Spradling of Remington addressed rumors about the 6.5 chambering listed for the much-anticipated Remington ACR (Adaptive Combat Rifle).

The Firearms Blog had assumed that the 6.5 cartridge would be the 6.5 Grendel, but an industry insider informed him that Remington was not developing a 6.5 Grendel variant, and someone else said that Remington may be developing their own 6.5 cartridge.

Jason confirmed with me via email yesterday that Remington was not actively working on a 6.5 Grnedel variant... or a 6.5 cartridge of their own.


"We have mentioned the 6.5 in our communications on the ACR simply because that platform is capable of handling the Grendel or something like it. At this point, there are no plans to chamber the ACR for the Grendel. However, that may change if we receive enough input from the marketplace to make it seem necessary."

The SCAR-L and ACR are destined for a collision course in the defense market as direct competitors as a replacement for the M-4 carbine. Both rifles are also going to be developed with semi-automatic variants for the civilian market. The SCAR-L and SCAR-H are currently priced north of $2,500 (sometimes far more).

Pricing for the ACR has not yet been released.

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October 27, 2009

The Generals Trap

Memeorandum is abuzz over this article in the Washington Post. It seems that a former Marine Captain with combat experience in Iraq who had joined the State Department in the Zabul province of Afghanistan resigned in September becuase of waht he viewed as a pointless war.

The official, Matthew Hoh, wrote in his letter of resignation:


"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan,"' he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

Mr. Hoh is far from being the only American with questions about how we are executing strategy in Afghanistan, and for that matter, in Pakistan. As Michael Yon has been warning for over a year, things in Afghanistan are not going as well as they have in Iraq. We're not winning. We may be losing. All that seems certain is that whatever we are doing now isn't working.

There are more opinions that I can cite on what people want us to do in Afghanistan.

There are know-nothing defeatists on the left that desire an American defeat as a mark against President Bush's legacy. Such a view is perverse, but not unexpected from those that became enslaved to a singular hatred over eight years that have turned them into little more than Gollum, trapped in what one fevered progressive blogger described as "one long, sustained scream."

Opposing them are those with more rational reasons for advocating for policies of withdrawal or various strategies that refocus on continuing the effort.

U.S. General Stanley McCrystal wants to commit a much larger American force of 40,000 to attack the Taliban in what some are referring to as the Afghan Surge, likening it to the military operation in Iraq that did much to bring the country to a relative level of stability and enabled U.S. forces to mostly withdraw to supporting roles.

Others such as Vice President Joe Biden, want to reduce the U.S. footprint within Afghanistan and snipe at Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists with Hellfire missiles fired from the ever-present Predator UAVs circling overhead in some area.

And of course, all of our engagement strategies hinge on collaborating with an Afghan government that means almost nothing outside of Kabul.

But there is no guarantee that either increasing our conventional ground forces nor reeling them back in and remotely targeted suspect foes will affect any sort of meaningful change in the remote regions of Afghanistan. The tribes have defeated and outlasted armies that have fought with much greater ferocity and less regard for human life for longer periods of time. The enemy knows that they do not have to defeat us in battle. They can simply afford to watch us burn ourselves out.

That is not to say that the war is unwinnable. We just need to take a fresh look at how the human terrain is different in Afghanistan, and rededicate ourselves to fighting the current war, and not fall into the ever-present generals trap of fighting the last war.

For all intents and purposes, the American war in Iraq is over, and we won. We deposed a dictator, foundered in a bloody insurgency and near civil war over a number of years, before alighting on a strategy that fit the war. Once those tactics were discovered and put into widespread use, the bulk of the insurgency collapsed or was coerced into giving up, leading us to a current state where American forces spend their time on base or in training roles, and the Iraqi government has become a more or less functional state. Terrorist attacks like the double vehicle bombings of several days ago still spread terror and mayhem, but no overtly longer threaten the stability of the state. There is now hope from politicians and generals of using the lessons learned in Iraq to fight the Afghan war.

But the commanders and politicians have learned the wrong lessons.

They focus on the strategy and tactics of military conflict and diplomacy between governments because that is how they are comfortable thinking. They seek to apply what they think they learned in Iraq, while forgetting how they learned.

They learned from "boots on the ground" who found out what worked by living with the population and learning that mastering the human terrain is far more important than building firebases.

One man who seems to understand the human terrain in Afghanistan better than most is U.S. Army Special Forces operator Major Jim Gant, who was deeply and personally embedded with his team in Mangwel, Konar Province.

Based upon his experiences in Afghanistan, Major Gant wrote about the concept of winning the war through tribal engagement in One Tribe at a Time (PDF).

Regular readers of Confederate Yankee know that I commented frequently about the conflict in Iraq during it's most trying times, but that I've been almost silent on Afghanistan. The reason is simple: I had few contacts there, and little understanding of the nature of the people or the conflict. I wasn't going to opine on a war that I simply don't understand in the slightest.

Thanks to One Tribe at a Time I have a far greater understanding of at least Major Gant's view of how to conduct the war. While I'm open to hear other opinions, his experience and the course he advocates sounds like an approach at least worth studying.

I have a suspicion that if we continue to listen to just the politicians and generals, we may once again stagger on with the wrong strategy, creating a war that we cannot win because our greatest adversary is ourselves.

(h/t Instapundit)

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:06 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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October 26, 2009

Senate On Verge of Health Care Plan That Will Dramatically Increase Number of Unemployed Low-Income Workers

Democrats in the Senate should call this precisely what it is—the Screw The Poor Compromise:


Details of the legislation could change, but its broad outlines are becoming clear. Employers with more than 50 workers wouldn't be required to provide health insurance, but they would face fines of up to $750 per employee if even part of their work force received a government subsidy to buy health insurance, this person said. A bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee had a lower fine of up to $400 per employee.

The bill to be brought to the Senate floor would create a new public health-insurance plan, but would give states the choice of opting out of participating in it, a proposal that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada backed last week.

Translated into English, what this means is that employers will have to pay far more in payroll taxes, meaning they will have far less money to actually hire workers. Like always, it will be those employees on the lower end of the scale—typically minorities—that will be the most greatly affected by the change, and when I say "affected" I mean like Jody Foster was affected in The Accused.

Phillip Klein at The American Spectator notes the disaster in the making:


The major problem with this disastrous proposal should be obvious to anybody with an inkling of understanding of economics. If you make it more costly for businesses to higher lower-income workers, they won't hire as many. Simply put, if the federal government set out to create a program designed to increase the unemployment rate among the working poor, it would be hard to come up with anything better than this.

There is a reason Reagan warned that the scariest words in our language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help," and the health care proposals being offered by Democrats are a perfect example of the unintended consequences of massive, complicated bills that Congress votes upon without even making an attempt to understand them.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:20 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Groups That Forced Banks to Accept Sub-Prime Borrowers Now Protesting Banks for Expecting Sub-Prime Borrowers to Repay Their Loans

You've got to be sickened by the gall of the SEIU, AFL-CIO, and Americans For Financial Reform.

In league with bullying liberal politicians in the House and Senate—and of course, their child sex slavery supporting allies at ACORN—these thugs forced banks to provide mortgages to people with bad credit by extorting them with empty charges of "racism." They are now screaming bloody murder that the banks are engaged in profiteering and preying on these same people.

Why?

For actually giving them the loans they extorted, and then having the temerity to expect these loans to be repaid. God forbid that they are treated like adults and expected to meet the financial obligations they made the decision to take on.

You can't fix stupid, apparently, but you sure as Hell can get them bused to a protest.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:00 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Conservatives Top Liberals, Moderates as Top Ideological Group

So sayeth Gallup:


Conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009, confirming a finding that Gallup first noted in June. Forty percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36% as moderate, and 20% as liberal. This marks a shift from 2005 through 2008, when moderates were tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group.

Let's keep those percentages in mind the next time we see a heavily-slanted poll that significantly under-samples Republicans and over-samples Democrats.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:08 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 98 words, total size 1 kb.

October 24, 2009

Victicrat



Look closely, and you'll see James O'Keefe, the filmmaker who nailed ACORN for supporting child sex trafficking, wearing a pimp suit once again... and dancing.

Badly.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:18 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.

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