Reprinted without permission from Israel Matzav

Thanks

The CIA is looking for translators for Arabic and Persian and they think they have found just the area to target: Dearbornistan.

The CIA plans a Detroit-area premiere for two TV commercials aimed at recruiting Arab- and Iranian-Americans.

The private screening will be held Nov. 18 in Dearborn, the heart of Michigan’s large Middle Eastern community.

The commercials are part of a major outreach effort by the CIA that’s included a high-profile visit to Dearborn in September by CIA Director Leon Panetta. He urged Arab-American and Muslim leaders to join efforts to reduce the threat of terrorism in the U.S.

The agency has a five-year plan to boost fluency in Arabic and other languages deemed critical to its work. Panetta wants to raise foreign language proficiency inside the CIA from less than a third to at least half of all analysts and intelligence operatives.

Good luck with that.

What they ought to be targeting is the Gravesend section of Brooklyn, New York, Deal, New Jersey, and Los Angeles and Great Neck, New York, where there are loyal American Jews who are of Syrian and Iranian origin and speak Arabic and Persian respectively.

But no, the CIA won’t recruit Jews, so they’ll go to Dearbornistan instead.

What could go wrong?

Deadly denial

Ralph Peters

Last Updated: 1:54 AM, November 10, 2009

Posted: 12:28 AM, November 10, 2009
As President Obama belatedly appears at Fort Hood today, will he dare to speak the word “terror?”
He won’t use the word “Islamist.” If he mentions Islam at all, it’ll be to sing its praises yet again.
We’ve already learned that Islamist terrorist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan attended the Northern Virginia mosque of Imam Anwar al-Aulaqi, a fiery al Qaeda supporter who later fled the United States. We know that Hasan’s peers, subordinates and patients repeatedly raised red flags that his superiors suppressed. We know he was a player on Islamist-extremist Web sites. The FBI’s uncovering one extremist link after another.
But to call this an act of terrorism, the White House would need an autographed photo of Osama bin Laden helping Hasan buy weapons in downtown Killeen, Texas. Even that might not suffice.
Islamist terrorists don’t all have al Qaeda union cards in their wallets. Terrorism’s increasingly the domain of entrepreneurs and independent contractors. Under Muslim jurisprudence, jihad’s an
individual responsibility. Hasan was a self-appointed jihadi.
Yet we’re told he was just having a bad day.
Our politically correct Army plays along. Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey won’t utter the word “terrorism.” The Forces Command Public Affairs Office guidance for officers never mentions “Islam” or “terror,” leaving you unsure whether there was a traffic accident down at Fort Hood, or maybe an outbreak of swine flu.
Meanwhile, the media try to turn Hasan into a victim. A sickening (and amateurish) Washington Post article portrayed him as a poor, impoverished minority living in a $320-a-month rathole apartment and driving a down-market car — as if the squalor made him a terrorist. Squalor he chose to live in, by the way: As a major drawing added professional pay for his medical credentials, plus his benefits, Hasan made a six-figure income. And he was single, without college loans or medical bills. Has anybody asked where the money went? I’ll bet a chunk of it disappeared in cash donations to hard-core Islamist causes. Will a single journalist track the missing bucks? It gets worse: On Sunday evening, a ranking officer in Hasan’s medical chain of command raced to cover her butt. Asked why the killer was promoted to major after receiving career-killer performance reviews at Walter Reed, the officer claimed that Hasan faced the same promotion board requirements as everyone else.’
Liar, liar, uniform on fire: A dirty big secret in our Army has been that officers’ promotion boards have quotas for minorities. We don’t call them quotas, of course. But if a board doesn’t hit the floor numbers, its results are held up until the list has been corrected. It’s almost impossible for the Army’s politically correct promotion system to pass over a Muslim physician.’
Sen. Joe Lieberman, one of the few lawmakers willing to whisper the word “terrorism,” needs to call the officers who sat on Hasan’s promotion board before the Senate, put them under oath, then ask if Hasan made major because of minority-quota requirements.
This corrupt (and now deadly) affirmative-action system does a severe disservice to the bulk of minority officers, who make the grade on quality and professionalism. It leaves other officers wondering if the new guy who just showed up in the unit is a “real” officer or an affirmative-action baby
Ditto for our government’s unwillingness to take on Muslim extremists on US soil. Blathering about freedom of religion, we foster hate speech.
By protecting the fanatics, we betray the peaceful majority of our Muslim citizens, leaving them afraid to speak out, since the feds shield the fanatics in charge of their mosques and communities.

Let’s be clear: Maj. Hasan’s terrorism should not result in a witch hunt against Muslim service members. But soldiers who happen to be Muslims must be subject to the same level of scrutiny and discipline as those of other faithsJust as we’d expect the Army to get rid of a disruptive white supremacist, we need to cashier anyone who espouses violent Islamist extremism — as Maj. Hasan did, again and again.We won’t. Because Islamist terrorism doesn’t exist. Just ignore the dead and ask our president.
As President Obama belatedly appears at Fort Hood today, will he dare to speak the word “terror?”

He won’t use the word “Islamist.” If he mentions Islam at all, it’ll be to sing its praises yet again.

We’ve already learned that Islamist terrorist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan attended the Northern Virginia mosque of Imam Anwar al-Aulaqi, a fiery al Qaeda supporter who later fled the United States. We know that Hasan’s peers, subordinates and patients repeatedly raised red flags that his superiors suppressed. We know he was a player on Islamist-extremist Web sites. The FBI’s uncovering one extremist link after another.

But to call this an act of terrorism, the White House would need an autographed photo of Osama bin Laden helping Hasan buy weapons in downtown Killeen, Texas. Even that might not suffice.

Islamist terrorists don’t all have al Qaeda union cards in their wallets. Terrorism’s increasingly the domain of entrepreneurs and independent contractors. Under Muslim jurisprudence, jihad’s an individual responsibility. Hasan was a self-appointed jihadi.

Yet we’re told he was just having a bad day.

Our politically correct Army plays along. Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey won’t utter the word “terrorism.” The Forces Command Public Affairs Office guidance for officers never mentions “Islam” or “terror,” leaving you unsure whether there was a traffic accident down at Fort Hood, or maybe an outbreak of swine flu.

Meanwhile, the media try to turn Hasan into a victim. A sickening (and amateurish) Washington Post article portrayed him as a poor, impoverished minority living in a $320-a-month rathole apartment and driving a down-market car — as if the squalor made him a terrorist.

Squalor he chose to live in, by the way: As a major drawing added professional pay for his medical credentials, plus his benefits, Hasan made a six-figure income. And he was single, without college loans or medical bills. Has anybody asked where the money went? I’ll bet a chunk of it disappeared in cash donations to hard-core Islamist causes. Will a single journalist track the missing bucks?

It gets worse: On Sunday evening, a ranking officer in Hasan’s medical chain of command raced to cover her butt. Asked why the killer was promoted to major after receiving career-killer performance reviews at Walter Reed, the officer claimed that Hasan faced the same promotion board requirements as everyone else.

Liar, liar, uniform on fire: A dirty big secret in our Army has been that officers’ promotion boards have quotas for minorities. We don’t call them quotas, of course. But if a board doesn’t hit the floor numbers, its results are held up until the list has been corrected. It’s almost impossible for the Army’s politically correct promotion system to pass over a Muslim physician.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, one of the few lawmakers willing to whisper the word “terrorism,” needs to call the officers who sat on Hasan’s promotion board before the Senate, put them under oath, then ask if Hasan made major because of minority-quota requirements.

This corrupt (and now deadly) affirmative-action system does a severe disservice to the bulk of minority officers, who make the grade on quality and professionalism. It leaves other officers wondering if the new guy who just showed up in the unit is a “real” officer or an affirmative-action baby.

Ditto for our government’s unwillingness to take on Muslim extremists on US soil. Blathering about freedom of religion, we foster hate speech. By protecting the fanatics, we betray the peaceful majority of our Muslim citizens, leaving them afraid to speak out, since the feds shield the fanatics in charge of their mosques and communities.

Let’s be clear: Maj. Hasan’s terrorism should not result in a witch hunt against Muslim service members. But soldiers who happen to be Muslims must be subject to the same level of scrutiny and discipline as those of other faiths.

Just as we’d expect the Army to get rid of a disruptive white supremacist, we need to cashier anyone who espouses violent Islamist extremism — as Maj. Hasan did, again and again.

We won’t. Because Islamist terrorism doesn’t exist. Just ignore the dead and ask our president.

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “The War After Armageddon.”

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A bad week for Democrats compounded by an awful moment for Barack Obama.
By ROBERT A. GEORGE

President Obama didn’t wait long after Tuesday’s devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.

After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.

But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a “shout-out” to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow — that Congressional Medal of Honor winner.” Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?

Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned. An incident like this requires a scrapping of the early light banter. The president should apologize for the tone of his remarks, explain what has happened, express sympathy for those slain and appeal for calm and patience until all the facts are in. That’s the least that should occur.

Remember this song?

Hail to The Chief

Hail to the Chief we have chosen for the nation,
Hail to the Chief! We salute him, one and all.
Hail to the Chief, as we pledge cooperation
In proud fulfillment of a great, noble call.

Yours is the aim to make this grand coun-try grander,
This you will do, That’s our strong, firm belief.
Hail to the one we selected as commander,
Hail to the President! Hail to the Chief!

I can’t see anybody applying it to Obammy. He’s no chief. He’s just an African.

– MSNBC, Aug. 31, 2009, Keith Olbermann on Robert F. McDonnell, Republican candidate for governor of Virginia:

“In [McDonnell's master's thesis], he described women having jobs as detrimental to the family, called legalized use of contraception illogical, pushed to make divorce more difficult, and insisted government should favor married couples over, quote, ‘cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.’ Wow. When did he write this? 1875? No, 1989. Wow, 1989.

“Goodbye, Mr. McDonnell.”

– MSNBC, Sept. 22, 2009, Rachel Maddow also on McDonnell:

“And here’s where the conservative movement and the Republican establishment smash into each other like bumper cars without bumpers. Here’s where Republican electoral chances stop being separate from the wild-eyed excesses of the conservative movement.

“Part of watching Republicans try to return to power is watching … the conservative movement eat the Republican Party, eat their electoral chances over and over and over again.”

On election night, conservatives-eating-Republicans resulted in an 18-point landslide for McDonnell, who beat his Democratic opponent 59 percent to 41 percent — winning two-thirds of all independent voters and ending the Democrats’ eight-year reign in the Virginia governor’s office.

Republicans swept all statewide offices for the first time in 12 years, winning the races for lieutenant governor and attorney general, as well as assembly seats, garbage inspector, dog catcher and anything else Virginians could vote for.

To paraphrase a pompous blowhard: Goodbye, Mr. Democrat.

And that’s not the most exciting news from election night! Astoundingly, Jon Corzine, the incumbent governor of heavily Democratic New Jersey — a state that Barack Obama won by 16 points just a year ago — lost by 5 points.

At 49 percent for Republican Chris Christie versus 44 percent for Corzine, the election wasn’t even close enough to be stolen by ACORN. (Although Corzine did extremely well among underaged Salvadoran prostitutes living in government housing.)

The biggest winner election night was pollster Scott Rasmussen, who — once again — produced the most accurate poll results. New York Times poll: Corzine 40, Christie 37; Quinnipiac poll: Corzine 43, Christie 38; Rasmussen poll: Christie 46, Corzine 43.

The biggest loser was President Obama, who campaigned tirelessly for Corzine, even giving up golf on several occasions and skipping a quarter-million-dollar “date night” with Michelle to stump for the Democrat.

Just two days before the election, Obama was at a rally in New Jersey assuring voters that Corzine was “one of the best partners I have in the White House. We work together. … Jon Corzine helped get this done.”

Except the problem is that voting for Obama a year ago was a fashion statement, much like it was once a fad to buy Beanie Babies, pet rocks and Cabbage Patch Kids. But instead of ending up with a ridiculous dust-collector at the bottom of your closet, the Obama fad leaves you with higher taxes, a reduced retirement fund, no job and a one-year wait for an MRI.

That is why Corzine’s defeat sounded the death knell for national health care.

The good news: Next time Corzine is in a major car accident after speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike, he’ll be able to see a doctor right away.

The media will try to rescue health care by talking about nothing but the 23rd district of New York, where the Democrat won Tuesday night. Congratulations, Democrats — you won a congressional seat in New York! Next up: A Catholic elected pope!

Far from an upset, the Democrats’ winning the 23rd district was a long-term plan of the Obama White House. That’s why Obama made John McHugh, the moderate Republican congressman representing the 23rd district, his Secretary of the Army earlier this year. The Democrats thought McHugh’s seat would be easy pickings.

Only in the last week has everyone acted as if a Democratic victory in the 23rd district would be a shocking surprise — an upset victory caused by puritanical Republicans staging inquisitions against “mainstream” Republican candidates like Dede Scozzafava, the designated “Republican” candidate in the special election.

This is preposterous — there was absolutely nothing Republican about Scozzafava. As a supporter of partial-birth abortion, card-check union schemes and massive government spending programs, she was less Republican than John McCain.

Even Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos called Scozzafava the most liberal candidate in the race — which may explain why she was the choice of George Soros’ Working Families Party and why she promptly endorsed the Democrat after withdrawing from the race last weekend.

Conservative opposition to Scozzafava hardly suggests that they plan to impose litmus tests on every Republican candidate in the 2010 elections.

Speaking of litmus tests, on MSNBC recently, liberal blogger Jane Hamsher said of the possibility that a blue dog Democrat would oppose national health care: “I dare Blanche Lincoln — I dare Blanche Lincoln to join a filibuster. She’ll draw primary opponents so fast it would make your head spin.”

While I’m sure an out-of-touch liberal blogger from Hollywood knows more about Arkansas than an elected senator from that state, Hamsher’s threat sounds more like an intra-party civil war than conservatives opposing a George Soros-supported Republican candidate in a New York congressional race.

Not only do conservatives not pick insane fights — such as staging a 2006 primary fight against a recent vice presidential candidate because he supported the war in Iraq — but conservatives are more popular than Republicans.

By contrast, liberals are less popular than Democrats. When conservatives take control of the Republican Party, Republicans win. When liberals take control of the Democratic Party, Democrats end up out of power for eight to 12 years.

By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS

All politics is local, they say, and Tuesday’s off-off-year elections certainly had their local angles. Jon Corzine has been a terrible governor even by the undemanding standards of terribly governed New Jersey. Creigh Deeds, though he looked good to Democratic Party recruiters not long ago, turned out to be an undistinguished campaigner, more driven by the concerns of Washington Post editorialists than of Virginia voters. And NY-23 Republican nomineee Dede Scozzafava was a bizarre choice, bizarre enough to inspire a seemingly quixotic third-party run by Doug Hoffman.

But these local angles weren’t enough to keep the Obama administration out of the races. President Obama barnstormed Virginia and New Jersey — and pumped money and Joe Biden into NY-23 in support of Democratic candidate Bill Owens. (One suspects Owens would have preferred more money and less Biden.)

And — until it started looking as if they might lose — the Obama people were suggesting that these races would seal their mandate and encourage congressional wafflers to toe the line on health-care reform. Not so much, as it turns out.

In fact, the elections underscored Obama’s political weakness just one year after his triumphant victory over Republican moderate John McCain.

The Obama invincibility that was so much in evidence then seems to have lost its power. People can argue the reasons why these elections, all in places Obama carried handily, were so close. But if he were the political marvel he was thought to be, these races wouldn’t have been contests, but walkovers. So one consequence of this Election Day is the end of his special political magic.

That’s no surprise — as that magic was a largely substanceless froth whipped up by campaign consultants and compliant big-media cheerleaders.

The truth is, Obama wasn’t ready to be president when he ran in 2008. When he started, he probably thought he had no real chance — he himself admitted upon entering the Senate that he wasn’t qualified to be president — and that his first run would simply be a PR effort that would lift him to the top ranks of Senate Democrats.

When, to everyone’s surprise, resentment of the Clinton machine crystallized around him, he wound up beating Hillary for the nomination, and found himself riding an out-of-control express train. He rode it to victory, with some help from erratic McCain actions.

But he was right the first time about not being ready for the Oval Office. As president, he seems confused and a bit distant on the issues, leaving the details to congressional Democrats and an ever-growing number of “czars” while he golfs and launches attacks at Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

With the economy tanking (unemployment is much worse after Obama’s deficit-swelling stimulus than Obama’s advisers predicted it would be with no stimulus at all), with the promised post-partisanship dissolving into witch-hunts against hostile media and the promised post-racial America devolving into the awkwardly staged “beer summit,” with the “necessary war” in Afghanistan the subject of endless dithering and the promised “smart diplomacy” materializing as a series of awkward missteps by Hillary Clinton, the froth has become a lot less frothy.

Republicans, who were prepared to give Obama the benefit of the doubt a year ago, now can’t stand him. Independents who voted for him are deserting in droves. And Democrats don’t seem that happy either.

The good news for Obama is that he doesn’t have to run for re-election for three more years, so he still has a chance to get his feet under him. But for Congress members facing elections in a year — including but not limited to the famous “blue-dog” Democrats — the lesson of this week is that Obama can’t save their seats if the public is unhappy (and, equally, that Obama probably can’t hurt them much, either). So what Obama wants is nice, but it’s what the voters in their districts want that will control.

That makes Obama’s health-care “reform” package look iffy and his other big plans for remaking America look even iffier. With the hope having faded, enthusiasm for change seems much diminished. From a mythic figure, Obama has shrunk to an ordinary politician — and, so far, not an obviously deft one. It’ll be politics as usual from now on, and we can thank Obama, at least, for making politics-as-usual seem not so bad after all …

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a University of Tennessee law professor. He hosts “Instavision” on PJTV.com and blogs at InstaPundit.com.

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The Democrats’ all-new “opt out” idea for health care reform is the latest fig leaf for a total government takeover of the health care system.

Democrats tell us they’ve been trying to nationalize health care for 65 years, but the first anyone heard of the “opt out” provision was about a week ago. They keep changing the language so people can’t figure out what’s going on.

The most important fact about the “opt out” scheme allegedly allowing states to decline government health insurance is that a state can’t “opt out” of paying for it. All 50 states will pay for it. A state legislature can only opt out of allowing its own citizens to receive the benefits of a federal program they’re paying for.

It’s like a movie theater offering a “money back guarantee” and then explaining, you don’t get your money back, but you don’t have to stay and watch the movie if you don’t like it. That’s not what most people are thinking when they hear the words “opt out.” The term more likely to come to mind is “scam.”

While congressional Democrats act indignant that Republicans would intransigently oppose a national health care plan that now magnanimously allows states to “opt out,” other liberals are being cockily honest about the “opt out” scheme.

On The Huffington Post, the first sentence of the article on the opt-out plan is: “The public option lives.”

Andrew Sullivan gloats on his blog, “Imagine Republicans in state legislatures having to argue and posture against an affordable health insurance plan for the folks, as O’Reilly calls them, while evil liberals provide it elsewhere.”

But the only reason government health insurance will be more “affordable” than private health insurance is that taxpayers will be footing the bill. That’s something that can’t be opted out of under the “opt out” plan.

Which brings us right back to the question of whether the government or the free market provides better services at better prices. There are roughly 1 million examples of the free market doing a better job and the government doing a worse job. In fact, there is only one essential service the government does better: Keeping Dennis Kucinich off the streets.

So, naturally, liberals aren’t sure. In Democratic circles, the jury’s still out on free market economics. It’s not settled science like global warming or Darwinian evolution. But in the meantime, they’d like to spend trillions of dollars to remake our entire health care system on a European socialist model.

Sometimes the evidence for the superiority of the free market is hidden in liberals’ own obtuse reporting.

In the past few years, The New York Times has indignantly reported that doctors’ appointments for Botox can be obtained much faster than appointments to check on possibly cancerous moles. The paper’s entire editorial staff was enraged by this preferential treatment for Botox patients, with the exception of a strangely silent Maureen Dowd.

As the Times reported: “In some dermatologists’ offices, freer-spending cosmetic patients are given appointments more quickly than medical patients for whom health insurance pays fixed reimbursement fees.”

As the kids say: Duh.

This is the problem with all third-party payor systems — which is already the main problem with health care in America and will become inescapable under universal health care.

Not only do the free-market segments of medicine produce faster appointments and shorter waiting lines, but they also produce more innovation and price drops. Blindly pursuing profits, other companies are working overtime to produce cheaper, better alternatives to Botox. The war on wrinkles is proceeding faster than the war on cancer, declared by President Nixon in 1971.

In 1960, 50 percent of all health care spending was paid out of pocket directly by the consumer. By 1999, only 15 percent of health care spending was paid for by the consumer. The government’s share had gone from 24 percent to 46 percent. At the same time, IRS regulations made it a nightmare to obtain private health insurance.

The reason you can’t buy health insurance as easily and cheaply as you can buy car insurance — or a million other products and services available on the free market — is that during World War II, FDR imposed wage and price controls. Employers couldn’t bid for employees with higher wages, so they bid for them by adding health insurance to the overall compensation package.

Although employees were paying for their own health insurance in lower wages and salaries, their health insurance premiums never passed through their bank accounts, so it seemed like employer-provided health insurance was free.

Employers were writing off their employee insurance plans as a business expense, but when the IRS caught on to what employers were doing, they tried to tax employer-provided health insurance as wages. But, by then, workers liked their “free” health insurance, voters rebelled, and the IRS backed down.

So now, employer-provided health insurance is subsidized not only by the employees themselves through lower wages and salaries, but also by all taxpayers who have to make up the difference for this massive tax deduction.

How many people are stuck in jobs they hate and aren’t good at, rather than going out and doing something useful, because they need the health insurance from their employers? I’m not just talking about MSNBC anchors — I mean throughout the entire economy.

Almost everything wrong with our health care system comes from government interference with the free market. If the health care system is broken, then fix it. Don’t try to invent a new one premised on all the bad ideas that are causing problems in the first place.

Live a separatist lifestyle that stands out, that isolates your women and children in particular, using forms of dress and behavior that replicate your traditional life in the new place, then complain loudly, vigorously and then violently when someone looks at you funny or complains that you aren’t assimilating. Demand everything you possibly can from the host society, in particular exploit their concepts of social welfare (the dole, public housing, etc) and human rights (like refugee and asylum) to expand your physical presence. Accuse everyone of abusing their own laws and ideals when they deny you the slightest thing from all your long list of demands. Establish enclaves, drive the locals out, make no effort to assimilate, state loudly that assimilation is a violation of your rights and their ideals, Teach your children that the locals are barbarians, that you and your culture are superior and will take over because god says so. Call local women sluts, abuse them and your own women. Make sure your males think they are entitled to every single thing. Use violence liberally, deny that you are using violence and accuse anyone who points to your violence of being intolerant.

Shall I go on?

Another Obama Test on Israel

by Gabriel Schoenfeld | New York Post

J-street is a new Washing ton, DC-based Jewish lobbying group that is seeking a place at the table alongside more venerable organizations like the American Jewish Committee and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Started only a year ago with generous “seed money” from the financier George Soros, its first national conference begins this Sunday. The keynote speaker — if he shows up — will be National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones.

The “if” is an important question, for there is a chance, if the White House pays attention to the controversy it would be stepping into, that Jones won’t show. Among the growing list of notables who’ve already dropped off the program’s “honorary host committee” are New York’s two senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. The reason for such distancing isn’t difficult to fathom. J-Street has been engaged in a bit of pretense. It bills itself as “pro-peace” yet is anything but — except, perhaps, if its policy recommendations were ever followed, the peace of the grave.

Consider the Goldstone report, recently approved by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which denounces Israel for committing “crimes against humanity” when it acted decisively in Gaza last winter to defend itself against Hamas rockets being lobbed daily into its territory. J-Street has issued two statements on Goldstone. Neither contains an iota of criticism of a report that even The Economist, not exactly friendly toward Israel, calls a “thimbleful of poison” and the product of “willful blindness.” Instead of condemning this UN travesty, J-Street has treated it with respect, calling upon Israel “to credibly address [its] full range of charges and findings.”

Then there’s the Iranian effort to acquire nuclear weapons, where J-Street has staked out a position to the left of the left. Last year, it launched a petition drive against a congressional resolution calling for tougher inspections of air and sea cargo heading for Iran, calling it “provocative” and “saber rattling.”

More recently, J-Street has applauded the administration policy of “engagement” with the mullahs. There’s nothing especially controversial about that. But J-Street has also adamantly opposed setting what it calls “artificial deadlines” in the talks now under way. Even the administration, as it goes the extra mile in diplomacy to probe Iran’s intentions, is aware that time is an important factor in facing up to the Iranian bomb program. Indeed, the administration has set just such an “artificial deadline” in case Iran is using the negotiations to run out the clock.

J-Street calls itself “pro-Israel,” but on one issue after the next — from the administration’s call for a total freeze on “natural growth” in settlements to its advocacy of direct Israeli talks with Hamas — it embraces positions overwhelmingly rejected by the Israeli public. It even has endorsed staging the play “Seven Jewish Children,” by the British playwright Caryll Churchill, which draws a “direct line” as The New Republic’s James Kirchick has observed, connecting “Nazi Germany’s mass murder of Jews to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”

It is difficult to see how the term “pro-Israel” applies. A better term might be “pro-squeezing Israel.” J-Street favors a US policy that would force Israel to take steps long favored by the American and Israeli left that Israel’s democratically elected government has considered time and again and deemed severely wanting.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama spoke of how the US alliance with Israel is based on shared interests and shared values. “Those who threaten Israel,” he said, “threaten us.” Israel, he continued, “has always faced these threats on the front lines. And I will bring to the White House an [unshakable] commitment to Israel’s security.”

Yet as president, Obama has been sending more than a few mixed signals and creating doubts about where he really stands. Jones has thus far kept a low profile as Obama’s national-security adviser. Giving a keynote address to the phony “pro-peace” and “pro-Israel” J-Street convocation, if it proceeds, will be a revealing test of the administration’s true intentions.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a Hudson Institute senior fellow, is a resident scholar at the Witherspoon Institute.

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Talk about food for thought!

It’s 1933.

Coulter is Kong; Olby is Darrow.

A plethora of scenarios are swimming through my mind as Kong moves through the film with Darrow unwillingly in his grasp all through this 1933 film.

Before I connect some of the ideas building inside my imagination with pen, ink and paper, let’s see what Ann has to say about Olby’s ‘douche-baggery’…

THE GRATING COMMUNICATOR

by Ann Coulter

The Obama administration has attacked Fox News in order to prevent government corruption stories broken on Fox from bleeding into the other media, which are all-consumed with daily updates on Levi Johnston’s Playgirl spread and Carrie Prejean’s breast implants.

That’s understandable. But I think the administration should have picked someone other than David Axelrod to deliver the claim that Fox News is “not really news,” inasmuch as Axelrod was behind the leak of scurrilous allegations in Jack Ryan’s sealed divorce papers when he was running for a Senate seat against Obama. Talk about vicious personal gossip.

Now that Fox has been branded an untouchable, the teacher’s-pet media are jubilant.

In Newsweek, Jacob Weisberg wrote a column saying liberals should refuse to appear on Fox News, pointedly concluding, “And no, I don’t want to come on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ to discuss it.” Considering that Weisberg is a 107-pound weasel with a speech impediment, this is on the order of Weisberg’s announcing that he’s not interested in appearing in the next “Ocean’s Eleven” movie with George Clooney.

The strangest thing about all the invective against Fox is that it is happening in a world that contains MSNBC. At least Fox News primetime hosts, and many of their guests, know something about politics. MSNBC’s primetime lineup presents an array of people who sound like earnest college kids who just walked up to a Common Cause table, and the sum-total of what they know about politics is what they read in the brochures.

In the past week, both Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have rolled out the Willie Horton ad, claiming that it marked the beginning of vicious personal attacks in politics, as opposed to what it was: The most devastatingly relevant campaign commercial in all of American history.

You can always astonish college kids by telling them the true story of Willie Horton. Among the jaw-dropping facts are:

– In the ’80s, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that a prison furlough policy had to be extended to convicted murderers, who were ineligible for parole.

– Even the Massachusetts Legislature, which contained about three Republicans, realized this was insane, and quickly passed a bill excluding first-degree murderers from the weekend furlough program. But in a desperate bid for the ACLU’s Brain-Dead Liberal of the Year Award, Gov. Michael Dukakis vetoed the bill.

– Horton, who was later released under this program, was in prison for carving up a teenager at a gas station and then stuffing his body into a garbage can. (He had already been convicted of attempted murder in South Carolina — through no fault of his own, the victim survived.)

– Even after Horton used his Dukakis-granted furlough to rape and torture a Maryland couple in their home for 12 straight hours, the Greek homunculus issued a statement reaffirming his strong support for furloughing murderers.

– The Bush campaign commercial about Dukakis’ furlough program never showed a picture of Horton. In fact, the actors playing “criminals” passing through a revolving door in the ad were all white.

– Voters considered it relevant that a candidate for president was so beholden to the ACLU that he backed an idiotic furlough program that released first-degree murderers.

Every informed student of the 1988 campaign knows that the Bush ad didn’t show Horton’s picture. And yet in Keith’s discussion of Bush’s allegedly vile, racist use of Willie Horton, he used a phony version of the ad, doctored to include a photo of Horton.

I don’t blame Keith personally for this blatant distortion: He gets all his research material from Markos Moulitsas and other left-wing bloggers, so he can’t be held responsible for the content of his show. Keith’s principal contribution to the program is his nightly display of self-congratulation and pompous douche-baggery.

Remember, Keith, like his MSNBC colleague Contessa Brewer, majored in “communications” in college, not a research-related field, such as political science. In his coursework, he learned such skills as: Dramatically Turning to Camera, Hysterical Self-Righteousness, Pausing Portentously and Gravely Demanding Apologies/Resignations From Various Public Figures.

Given this background, it’s understandable that Keith will make errors. As viewers witnessed recently, he can’t even pronounce the name of prominent American economist and philosopher, Thomas Sowell. (Although he did spend three weeks at a Berlitz course in Arabic honing his pronunciation of “Abu Ghraib” to razor-sharp prissiness.)

The bloggers and Keith bring different skill sets to the game. They provide the tendentious half-truths, phony opinion polls and spurious social science, while Keith provides his booming baritone, gigantic “Guys and Dolls” suits and gift for ridiculous, fustian grandiloquence. Keith is far better equipped than, say, the pint-sized, girly-voiced, Frito Bandito-accented Markos Moulitsas to deliver the party line.

But here’s the fly in the ointment: Keith has once again been victimized by left-wing blogs into thinking that the 1988 Bush ad showed Willie Horton’s picture, when in fact, Horton’s race was deliberately scrubbed from the ad.

Again, in fairness to Keith, he’s never been a “content guy.” He was a communications major. (The agriculture school Keith attended offered a degree in this field.) He lifts the material for his show from liberal blogs, overwrites it, and throws in his trademark smirking and snorts. But that’s all he does because, again, he was a communications major.

Now, shall I jot down some of my own scenarios? Yes? No?

Click on image to enlarge

[Note: The "Muslim Mafia" Parallel Was Originally Drawn by TMQ2 Blog Administrator, Lance, in 2007]

See my post from 2007 and see if this new Muslim Mafia book sounds familiar:

The Muslim Mafia — A Spreading Concept – by Lance, August 15, 2007

The question of whether President Obama should send more troops to Afghanistan misses the point.

What Obama really needs to do is: Invent a time machine, go back to the 2008 presidential campaign and not say, over and over and over again, that Afghanistan was a “war of necessity” while the war in Iraq was a “war of choice.” (Oh, and as long as you’re back there, ditch Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett and that gay “school safety” czar.)

The most important part of warfare is picking your battlefield, and President Bush picked Iraq for a reason.

Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan attacked us on 9/11 — or the dozen other times American embassies, barracks and buildings came under jihadist onslaught since Jimmy Carter presided over “regime change” in Iran in 1979. Both countries — and others — gave succor to terrorists who had attacked the U.S. repeatedly, and would do so again.

As liberals endlessly reminded us during the three weeks of war in Afghanistan before the U.S. military swept into Kabul, Afghanistan has all the makings of a military disaster. It is mountainous, cave-pocked, tribal, has no resources worth fighting for and a populace that makes Khalid Sheikh Mohammed look like Alistair Cooke.

By contrast, Iraq had a relatively educated, pro-Western populace, but was ruled by a brutal third-world despot.

It’s always something with the Muslims. You either have mostly sane people governed by a crazy dictator — Iraq, Iran and Syria (also California and Michigan) — or a crazy people governed by relatively sane leaders — Pakistan and Afghanistan, post-U.S. invasion (also Vermont and Minnesota). There are also insane people ruled by insane leaders (but enough about the House Democratic Caucus). Sane people with sane rulers has not been fully tried yet.

Not only could regime change in Iraq work, but Iraq’s countryside was susceptible to America’s overwhelming air power. Also, Iraq has fabulous natural resources. Once the U.S. got control of Iraq’s oil fields, the Shia, Sunni and Kurds could decide to either prosper together or starve together. (And it’s not just oil: They’re basically sitting on top of most of the world’s proven reserves of cab drivers.)

By contrast, there aren’t a lot of sticks that can be used in a wasteland like Afghanistan, where the people live in caves and scratch out a living in the dirt. The only “carrot” we might be able to offer them would be actual carrots.

But Democrats couldn’t care less about military strategy — at least any “strategy” that doesn’t involve allowing soldiers to date one another. To the extent you can get liberals to focus on national security at all, you will find they are rooting against their own country.

Liberals sneered at Bush’s description of Iraq as the “central front of the war on terror” and a step toward the “democratization of the Middle East” — as Mark Danner did in the Sept. 11, 2005, New York Times — because sneering was all they could do. By design, Iraq was the central front in the war on terrorism.

Any fanatic who hated the Great Satan, owned an overnight bag and was not already working for The New York Times was lured across the border into Iraq … to be met by the awesome force of the U.S. military. Bush chose the battlefield that made the best flytrap for Islamic crazies and also that was most amenable to regime change.

Now nearly all denizens of the Middle East want the U.S. to invade them, so they can live in democracy, too. As Thomas Friedman inadvertently admitted, Lebanese voters credit their recent free election, in which the voters threw out Hezbollah, to President Bush. (American liberals, naturally, gave the credit to Obama, who they also believe is responsible for the sun rising every morning.)

Brave Iranian students who protested the tyrant Ahmadinejad did so because of Iraq — and then they stopped because of Obama’s indifference. Sadly for them, America’s foreign policy will now be based on a calculus of political correctness, not national security.

During the campaign, Obama prattled on about Iraq being a “war of choice” and Afghanistan a “war of necessity” for no more thoughtful reason than a desire to win standing ovations from treasonous liberals.

But lo and behold, those very liberals who were champing at the bit to fight in Afghanistan are suddenly full of objections to the war there, too. As Frank Rich points out: “Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is poorer, even larger and more populous, more fragmented and less historically susceptible to foreign intervention.”

Now they notice.

Afghanistan is a brutal battlefield, largely invulnerable to modern warfare — something the British and Russians learned. But as our military under Bush showed the world in 21 days, scimitar-wielding savages are no match for the voluntary civilian troops of a free people.

Bush removed the Taliban from power, captured or killed the lunatics and, for the next seven years, about the only news we heard out of Afghanistan were occasional announcements of parliamentary elections, new schools, water and electricity plants.

The difficult choice Obama faces in Afghanistan is entirely of his own making, not his generals’ and certainly not Bush’s. It was Obama’s meaningless blather about Afghanistan being a “war of necessity” during the campaign that has moved the central front in the war on terrorism from Iraq — a good battleground for the U.S. — to Afghanistan — a lousy battlefront for the U.S.

And it was Obama’s idea to treat war as if it’s an ordinary drug bust, reading suspects their Miranda rights and taking care not to put civilians in harm’s way.

A Democrat is president and, once again, America finds itself in an “unwinnable war.” I know Democrats will never learn, but I wish the voters would.

‘Moderate’ CAIR Features Radicals at Annual Banquet
After dismissing jihad charges in new book, showcases imam cited in ‘93 WTC bombing

CAIR's Buddy, Radical Imam Siraj Wahhaj

While mocking an explosive new book that presents internal documents showing it is a U.S. front for global jihad, the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations is trumpeting a keynote speaker at its 15th annual banquet next week who was an uninidicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing investigation and who told New Jersey Muslims the U.S. government would one day be taken over by an Islamic caliphate.

CAIR currently features Imam Siraj Wahhaj’s name on the opening flash page to its website, along with co-keynote speaker Dalia Mogahed, who sparked controversy of her own recently when she defended Shariah, or Islamic law, on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist Muslim group, insisting the majority of women around the world associate Shariah with “gender justice.” }} more…

Also see: TMQ2’s complete list of posts about jihad front group CAIR

1. Military affairs

a. Short range rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza. Several smuggling tunnels from Egypt into Gaza were bombed.

2. Middle Eastern diplomacy

a. Israeli relations with Turkey continue to be an issue.

i. Turkish military sources now claim that Israeli participation in the Anatolian Eagle air force exercises was canceled due to the late Israeli delivery of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to Turkey. After Israel was excluded the U.S. and NATO nations withdrew from the exercise.

ii. Following the cancellation of Anatolian Eagle Turkey and Syria announced they will hold a second series of joint military exercises. A Turkish delegation also visited Syria.

iii. The Israeli Foreign Ministry summoned the Turkish envoy to Israel to protest a television program on Turkish state television that depicts Israeli soldiers deliberately killing Palestinian civilians. In response to Israeli protests Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc commented that Turkish-Israeli relations were strong and that the program should not cause a “diplomatic problem.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated Israel was “disappointed” by the program.

iv. Turkey has arrested between 30 and 50 members of the local al-Qaeda connected ‘Islamic Jihad League’ on suspicion they were planning attacks against U.S., Israeli and NATO targets in Turkey.

b. Palestinian and Egyptian sources report that the Palestinian reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah will not be signed until there is a “better atmosphere” between the parties.

c. Lebanon has been elected to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

d. Reports indicate that Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abul Gheit has refused to participate in the Mediterranean Union summit to be held in Istanbul in November if Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman attends.

e. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice will travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories. She will address an annual conference hosted by Israeli President Shimon Peres and meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

f. U.S., French, Russian and Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will meet next week to discuss details of a plan to transfer low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia and France for processing into medical isotopes.

g. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao hosted Iranian First Vice President Muhammad Reza Rahim and stated that “cooperation in trade and energy has widened and deepened.” Chinese Ambassador to Israel Zhao Jun stated in an interview that China was “strongly against the idea that the Iranians should develop nuclear weapons.” Trade between China and Iran grew 35% in 2008 to $27 billion. During the past five years China has also signed oil deals worth an estimated $120 billion.

h. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated that it was “premature” to “talk” about additional sanctions on Iran and that there was there was “no need to scare the Iranians.” Putin’s comments came after U.S. Secretary Hilary Clinton visited Russia for talks on the Iranian issue.

i. Saudi Arabia has proposed that if wealthy countries reduce oil consumption to combat global warming, they should pay compensation to oil producers.

3. ‘Human rights’

a. The United Nations ‘Human Rights Council’ (UNHRC) endorsed the Goldstone report. Of the 47 members six nations including the U.S. voted against, 11 abstained and 5, including France and Britain, did not take part in the vote. The report will now be forwarded to the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council. The report asks that the Security Council forward it to the International Criminal Court as a basis for prosecution of Israelis for ‘war crimes.’

b. Richard Goldstone expressed regret over the UNHRC vote and stated “There is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report.”

(18) America’s lower life expectancy compared to countries with socialist health care proves that their medical systems are superior.

President Obama has too much intellectual pride to make such a specious argument, so instead we have to keep hearing it from his half-wit supporters.

These Democrats are all over the map on where precisely Americans place in the life-expectancy rankings. We’re 24th, according to Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Barbara Boxer; 42nd, according to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell; 35th, according to Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson; and 47th, according to Rep. Dennis Kucinich. So the U.S. may have less of a “life expectancy” problem than a “Democratic math competency” problem.

But also, as described in last week’s column, the citizenry’s health is not the same thing as the citizenry’s health care system.

Besides America’s high rate of infant mortality — based on biology and lifestyle choices, not medical care — Americans are also more likely to overeat or smoke than people in other developed nations. And the two biggest killers in the Western world are obesity and smoking.

Liberals shouldn’t have to be reminded how fat Americans are, inasmuch as they are always chortling about it. A 2004 New York Times article leeringly quoted a foreign doctor, saying: “We Europeans, whenever we came to America, we always noticed the enormous number of obese people on the streets.” I note that these are the same people who openly worship Michael Moore.

Somewhat surprisingly to those of us who have long admired France for its humanitarian smoking laws, until the mid-1980s, Americans had had the highest rate of smoking in the developed world. This makes patriotic Americans like me wonder if there’s a way to get Michael Moore to start smoking. (You know, just to keep his weight down or whatever.)

To be fair, the French are still being exposed to large amounts of smoke due to all the cars being set on fire by Muslims.

In 2003, America led the world in smoking-related deaths among women — followed by Hungary. Simply excluding all smoking-related deaths from the World Health Organization’s comparison of life expectancies at age 50 in 20 developed nations would raise U.S. women’s life expectancy from 17th to 7th place and lift American men from 14th to 9th place.

Americans are also more likely to die in military combat than the whimpering, pant-wetting cowards our military has spent the past 70 years defending — I mean, than “our loyal European allies.” This is a health risk Europeans have managed to protect themselves against by living in a world that contains the United States military.

These are risk factors that have nothing to do with the health care system. To evaluate the quality of our health care, you have to compare apples to apples by looking at outcomes for specific medical conditions.

Although the United States has a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer and diabetes compared to Europe — because of lifestyle choices and genetics — it also has better survival rates across the board for all these medical problems.

The most revealing international comparisons look at cancer survival rates, because of the universally extensive record-keeping for this disease.

A European study found that, compared to 18 European countries, the U.S. had strikingly higher five-year survival rates in all 12 cancers studied, except for one: stomach cancer. Even there, the survival rates were close — and the difference was attributed to the location of the cancer in the stomach.

For all types of cancers, European men have only a 47.3 percent five-year survival rate, compared to 66.3 percent survival rate for American men. The greatest disparity was in prostate cancer, which American men are 28 percent more likely to survive than European men.

European women are only 55.8 percent likely to live five years after contracting any kind of cancer, compared to 62.9 percent for American women.

In five cancers — breast, prostate, thyroid, testicular and skin melanoma — American survival rates are higher than 90 percent. Europeans hit a 90 percent survival rate for only one of those — testicular cancer.

Most disturbingly, many cancers in Europe are discovered only upon the victim’s death — twice as many as in the U.S. Consequently, the European study simply excluded cancers that were first noted on the death certificate, so as not to give the U.S. too great an advantage.

There are no national registries for heart disease, as there are for cancer, making survival-rate comparisons more difficult. But treatments can be measured and, again, Americans are far more likely to be on medication for heart disease and high cholesterol — medications that extend the lives of millions, developed by those evil, profit-grubbing American drug companies.

To get to the comparison they like (America is not as good as Sweden!), liberals have to slip in the orange of “life expectancy,” and hope no one will mention monster truck races, Krispy Kremes and Virginia Slims. As the old saying goes: Life doesn’t last longer in socialist countries; it just feels like it.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was born Jewish and converted to Islam, according to a report in London’s Daily Telegraph.

The Saturday report cited a photograph from 2008 which showed Ahmadinejad holding up his identity card, bearing his former last name, Sabourjian, a common Jewish name in Iran.

The Telegraph said that the name was “Jewish” for cloth weaver, and that the Iranian president’s family had changed their name when they converted to Islam. “The name derives from “weaver of the Sabour,” the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia,” the report said.

The report also cited experts as speculating that Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic rhetoric may be a kind of overcompensation to conceal his heritage. “Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith… By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections,” Ali Nourizadeh, the head of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies was quoted as saying.

(17) America’s low ranking on international comparisons of infant mortality proves other countries’ socialist health care systems are better than ours.

America has had a comparatively high infant mortality rate since we’ve been measuring these things, going back to at least the ’20s. This was the case long before European countries adopted their cradle-to-grave welfare schemes and all while the U.S. was the wealthiest country on Earth.

One factor contributing to the U.S.’s infant mortality rate is that blacks have intractably high infant mortality rates — irrespective of age, education, socioeconomic status and so on. No one knows why.

Neither medical care nor discrimination can explain it: Hispanics in the U.S. have lower infant mortality rates than either blacks or whites. Give Switzerland or Japan our ethnically diverse population and see how they stack up on infant mortality rates.

Even with a higher-risk population, the alleged differences in infant mortality are negligible. We’re talking about 7 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in the U.S. compared to 5 deaths per 1,000 for Britain and Canada. This is a rounding error — perhaps literally when you consider that the U.S. tabulates every birth, even in poor, small and remote areas, while other countries are not always so meticulous.

But the international comparisons in “infant mortality” rates aren’t comparing the same thing, anyway. We also count every baby who shows any sign of life, irrespective of size or weight at birth.

By contrast, in much of Europe, babies born before 26 weeks’ gestation are not considered “live births.” Switzerland only counts babies who are at least 30 centimeters long (11.8 inches) as being born alive. In Canada, Austria and Germany, only babies weighing at least a pound are considered live births.

And of course, in Milan it’s not considered living if the baby isn’t born within driving distance of the Côte d’Azur.

By excluding the little guys, these countries have simply redefined about one-third of what we call “infant deaths” in America as “miscarriages.”

Moreover, many industrialized nations, such as France, Hong Kong and Japan — the infant mortality champion — don’t count infant deaths that occur in the 24 hours after birth. Almost half of infant deaths in the U.S. occur in the first day.

Also contributing to the higher mortality rate of U.S. newborns: Peter Singer lives here.

But members of Congress, such as Reps. Dennis Kucinich, Jim Moran and John Olver, have all cited the U.S.’s relatively poor ranking in infant mortality among developed nations as proof that our medical care sucks. This is despite the fact that in many countries a baby born the size of Dennis Kucinich would not be considered a live birth.

Apart from the fact that we count — and try to save — all our babies, infant mortality is among the worst measures of a nation’s medical care because so much of it is tied to lifestyle choices, such as the choice to have children out of wedlock, as teenagers or while addicted to crack.

The main causes of infant mortality — aside from major birth defects — are prematurity and low birth-weight. And the main causes of low birth-weight are: smoking, illegitimacy and teenage births. Americans lead most of the developed world in all three categories. Oh, and thank you for that, Britney Spears.

Although we have a lot more low birth-weight and premature babies for both demographic and lifestyle reasons, at-risk newborns are more likely to survive in America than anywhere else in the world. Japan, Norway and the other countries with better infant mortality rates would see them go through the roof if they had to deal with the same pregnancies that American doctors do.

As Nicholas Eberstadt demonstrates in his book “The Tyranny of Numbers: Mismeasurement and Misrule,” American hospitals do so well with low birth-weight babies that if Japan had our medical care with their low birth-weight babies, another third of their babies would survive, making it even harder for an American kid to get into MIT.

But I think it’s terrific that liberals are finally willing to start looking at outcomes to judge a system. I say we start right away with the public schools!

In international comparisons, American 12th-graders rank in the 14th percentile in math and the 29th percentile in science. The U.S. outperformed only Cyprus and South Africa in general math and science knowledge. Worse, Asian countries didn’t participate in the last 12th-grade assessment tests.

Imagine how much worse our public schools would look — assuming that were possible — if we allowed other countries to exclude one-half of their worst performers!

That’s exactly what liberals are doing when they tout America’s rotten infant mortality rate compared to other countries. They look for any category that makes our medical care look worse than the rest of the world — and then neglect to tell us that the rest of the world counts our premature and low birth-weight babies as “miscarriages.”

As long as American liberals are going to keep announcing that they’re embarrassed for their country, how about being embarrassed by our public schools or by our ridiculous trial lawyer culture that other countries find laughable?

Don’t be discouraged, liberals — when it comes to utterly frivolous lawsuits against obstetricians presented to illiterate jurors so that John and Elizabeth Edwards can live in an 80-room house, we’re still No. 1!

(15) Democrats lost Congress in 1994 because President Clinton failed to pass national health care.

I’m not sure if this is another example of the left’s wishful-thinking method of analysis or if they’re seriously trying to trick the Blue Dog Democrats into believing it. But I gather liberals consider the 1994 argument an important point because it was on the front page of The New York Times a few weeks ago in place of a story about Van Jones or ACORN.

According to a news story by Jackie Calmes: “In 1994, Democrats’ dysfunction over fulfilling a new president’s campaign promise contributed to the party’s loss of its 40-year dominance of Congress.”

That’s not the way I remember it. The way I remember it, Republicans swept Congress in 1994 not because Clinton failed to nationalize health care, but because he tried to nationalize health care. HillaryCare failed because most Americans didn’t want it. (For more on this, see “ObamaCare.”)

Bill Clinton had run as an old-school, moderate Democrat and then, as soon as he got elected, immediately became Che Guevara. (What is it with all our black presidents and these bait-and-switch tactics?)

Instead of pursuing “mend it, don’t end it” on welfare and no “middle-class tax hike” — as Clinton promised during the campaign — he raised taxes, signed ridiculous gun restrictions into law, enacted “midnight basketball” as the solution to urban crime, announced that he was putting gays in the military and let Hillary run riot over health care.

But just to check my recollection, I looked up the Times’ own coverage of the 1994 congressional races.

Republicans won a landslide election in 1994 based largely on the “Contract With America,” which, according to the Times, promised “tax cuts, more military spending and a balanced-budget amendment.” Far from complaining about Clinton incompetently failing to pass health care, the Times reported that Republicans were “unabashedly claiming credit for tying Congress up in knots.”

These claims were immediately followed by … oh, what was that word again? Now I remember …

LANDSLIDE!

It was almost as if the voters agreed with the Republicans in opposing Clinton’s risky health care scheme, then voted accordingly.

The Times’ own polling showed that two-thirds of voters believed that “government should be less involved in solving national problems” — which doesn’t sound to me like voters being huffy with Clinton for failing to stage a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy.

In a Hail Mary pass just before the election, President Clinton pulled Hillary off the health care beat. CNN’s repository of liberal cliches, Bill Schneider, reported that Clinton was trying to calm voters by “removing the most visible symbol of the liberal tilt of the last two years, which is the first lady.”

And what a morale boost for the Democrats that must have been! Kind of like firing the manager of a losing baseball team in the last week of the season.

Too late. Shouldn’t have tried to socialize health care.

(16) America’s relatively low life expectancy compared to countries with socialist health care proves welfare-state health care is better.

The life expectancy argument is so stupid even The New York Times hasn’t made it — except in news stories quoting others or in the ramblings of the Times’ more gullible op-ed columnists. You mostly hear the life expectancy argument from Hollywood actresses and profoundly dumb Democrats, such as Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland.

Trying to evaluate the quality of a nation’s health care by looking at life expectancy is like trying to estimate the birthrate by counting the number of flowers bought on Valentine’s Day. (Or estimating future pregnancies of women with low self-esteem by adding up the total number of U.S. cities on a Bobby Brown tour and then multiplying by 2.)

There are lots of ways to get pregnant that don’t require flowers or a backstage pass to a Bobby Brown concert, just as there are lots of ways to die that don’t require setting foot inside a doctor’s offfice.

For example, more Americans are murdered with guns than in any other industrialized country. (And it would be even more without concealed-carry laws! See John Lott, “More Guns, Less Crime.”) According to a 1997 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the homicide rate with firearms alone was 16 times higher in the U.S. than in 25 other industrialized countries combined.

That will tend to reduce the U.S.’s “life expectancy” numbers, while telling us absolutely nothing about the country’s medical care. (I promise that if you make it to a hospital alive, you are more likely to survive a gunshot wound in the U.S. than any place else in the world.)

It’s comparing apples and oranges to talk about life expectancy as if it tracks with a country’s health care system. What matters is the survival rate from the same starting line, to wit, the same medical condition. Not surprisingly, in the apples-to-apples comparisons, the U.S. medical system crushes the welfare-state countries.

For the glorious details, see next week’s column.

I’m trying to get to the next installment of my Pulitzer Prize-deserving series on liberal lies about national health care, but apparently liberals have decided to torture us by neurotically fixating on one lie.

After President Barack Obama gave a speech to a joint session of Congress last week passionately defending his national health care plan, the Democrats were agog at the brilliance of the speech. Nancy Pelosi was so thrilled, her expression almost changed.

But as Obama ticked off one demonstrably false claim after another — eliciting 37 standing ovations from the Democrats in the audience — America’s greatest living statesman, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., yelled out, “You lie!” in response to Obama’s claim that the bill will not cover illegal aliens.

There are a number of theories about why America’s greatest living statesman shouted “You lie!” at that juncture, but mine is that Wilson said it because Obama told a big, fat stinking lie.

Every single American knows it’s a lie. But liberals take pleasure in repeating it — and then condescendingly accusing anyone who doesn’t accept their lie of being a toothless, illiterate racist.

Our politicians, media and courts have done everything they can to encourage illegal immigration, including obstinately refusing to enforce the border. While illegals streaming across the border generally aren’t prosecuted, U.S. border patrol agents who naively try to guard the border often are.

Wise (and pregnant) Latinas dash across the border just in time to give birth at American hospitals — medical services paid for by U.S. taxpayers — gaining instant citizenship for their children, thereby entitling them to the entire Chinese menu of American welfare programs.

In 2004, 42.6 percent of all babies born at taxpayer expense in California were born to illegal aliens, according to a state report on Medi-Cal-funded deliveries. In hospitals close to the Mexican border, the figure is closer to 80 percent. Remember: This is before health care becomes “free” to every U.S. resident.

Hospitals across the country are going bankrupt because the federal government forces them to provide free services to illegals. This situation appears to have angered some segment of the population, in particular, American citizens who pay taxes to support the hospitals, but then are forced to spend hours writhing in pain in hospital waiting rooms.

With Americans in a boiling cauldron of rage about the government’s impotent response to the tsunami of illegal immigrants, last year, both political parties ran candidates for president who favor amnesty for illegal immigrants.

And now Democrats have the audacity to tell us to our faces that national health care won’t cover illegals. Not only that, but they tell us we must not be able to read if we think it does.

The crystalline example of this sneering liberal pomposity came from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Monday night:

“Reading the House health care bill would show you that (the bill does not cover illegal aliens). But you know, sometimes reading is hard. Fortunately, in the case of the health reform bill, there is a way to get all of the information that’s in it without any of that pesky reading.

“It’s called HearTheBill.org. Volunteer voiceover actors have donated their time to read all 1,017 pages of the house health care reform bill, HR-3200, the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009.

“So if you don’t want to tire out your eyes, you could just listen to the thing that disproves (Rep. Wilson).”

Maddow then played an audio clip of Section 246 from the bill. This section, which liberals keep brandishing like a DNA-stained dress, states: “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

In other words, illegal aliens are excluded from precisely one section of the thousand-page, goodie-laden health care bill: Section 246, which distributes taxpayer-funded “affordability credits” to people who can’t afford to pay for their own health care.

Even this minor restriction on taxpayer largesse to illegals will immediately be overturned by the courts. But the point is: Except for vouchers, the bill does not even pretend to exclude illegals from any part of national health care — including the taxpayer-funded health insurance plan.

Moreover, liberals won’t have to wait for some court to find that the words “nothing in this subtitle shall allow” means “this bill allows,” because the bill contains no mechanism to ensure that the health care vouchers aren’t going to illegal aliens. Nor does the bill prohibit the states from providing taxpayer-funded health care vouchers to illegals.

Democrats keep voting down Republican amendments that would insert these restrictions — just before dashing to a TV studio to denounce anyone who says the health care bill covers illegal aliens.

It’s as if we have a relative who shows up at every holiday gathering, gets bombed and totals the family car. At the 18th Christmas celebration, he’s not only demanding a drink, but also calling us liars for saying he’s already totaled 17 family cars. Gimme a gin and tonic and the car keys, you lying racist!

I think that’s why America’s greatest living statesman erupted with rage when Obama retailed this particular lie during his speech on health care.

It’s bad enough to be lied to, but to be lied to by people who accuse us of not being able to read when the problem is that we can read — and also can remember what happened at the last 17 family Christmases — is more than even Mother Teresa could bear without a quick heckle.