Who is Michael Ledeen, and why is he being demonized by the mad Iranian mullahs? Washington Times:

Defendants in the show trials under way in Tehran are being given the third degree over their links to foreign masterminds. The chief prosecutor is asking defendants questions such as, "Were you sent by Michael Ledeen? What did Michael Ledeen tell you to do?" Another was told flat out, "You are an agent of Michael Ledeen!" The universal response has been, "Michael who?"
"You have to understand - these are crazy people," Mr. Ledeen told The Washington Times yesterday. He is the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former consultant to the National Security Council, the State Department and the Defense Department. He has published widely on Iranian matters, and his tag line "faster, please" -- referring to the need to accelerate the pace of change in Iran -- is well-known among those who follow the issue closely. Mr. Ledeen is one of three public intellectuals implicated by the Iranians, the others being Ambassador Mark Palmer and political science professor Abbas Milani at Stanford University. Why these three? "I have no idea," Mr. Ledeen said. "We mostly agree on the issues, but we've never worked as a group."

Some enlightening figures, courtesy Jacob Sullum at Reason Hit & Run points out this inconvenient fact from the New York Times:

Supporters of Mr. Obama’s plan to overhaul the system have outspent opponents, with $24 million worth of advertising, compared with $9 million from opponents. An additional $24 million has been broadly spent in support of overhauling the system without backing a specific plan.

That's $48 million for reform supporters, $9 millon for their opponents. That's a 5:1 spending ratio, and yet the more that people learn about what Obama and the Democrats are actually planning, the greater becomes the majority of Americans opposing health care reform.

At least, when MSNBC turns a black gun owner at an anti-government-health-plan rally into--I guess--a white guy. The story at Newsbusters:

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer fretted over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: "A man at a pro-health care reform rally...wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip....there are questions about whether this has racial overtones....white people showing up with guns." Brewer failed to mention the man she described was black.
Following Brewer’s report, which occurred on the Morning Meeting program, host Dylan Ratigan and MSNBC pop culture analyst Toure discussed the supposed racism involved in the protests. Toure argued: "...there is tremendous anger in this country about government, the way government seems to be taking over the country, anger about a black person being president....we see these hate groups rising up and this is definitely part of that." Ratigan agreed: "...then they get the variable of a black president on top of all these other things and that’s the move – the cherry on top, if you will, to the accumulated frustration for folks."
Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black. The man appeared at a health care rally outside of President Obama’s speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, Arizona.

Because black gun-owners opposing Obama doesn't fit the narrative, I guess. There's a word for this behavior by MSNBC . . . let's see . . . what could it be . . .
Maybe . . . LIAR?

MSNBC already had no credibility with anyone with an IQ above room temperature. They are oblivious to the First Rule of Holes: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Since the emergence of the Religious Left to browbeat their fellow citizens into acquiescing in the forced transfer of wealth from one to another--to assuage the guilt and feelings of the aforementioned Religious Left--let's ponder some other Biblical quotes:

Thou shall not steal.

Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: God, I thank you that I am not like all other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I collect. But the tax collector stod at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

That's enough for starters. Who, exactly, is placing themselves above others here? Who are the rulers--the powerful, and who are not? Who is doing the judging, and the condemning? Who are concerned not primarily about their own behavior, but seek to change by force the behavior of others?

Update: Here's why David Harsanyi does this for money, and I don't:

Yes, it's finally come to this. We've dragged the Almighty Lord into the debate. It's Yahweh or the highway.

Wikipedia definition:

Socialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating state, public or common worker (through cooperatives) ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with an egalitarian method of compensation. Modern socialism originated in the late 18th-century intellectual and working class political movement that criticized the effects of industrialization and private ownership on society, however, socialism itself is not a political system; it is instead an economic system distinct from capitalism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels used the terms "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably, and posited that it would be achieved via class struggle and a proletarian revolution. Vladimir Lenin, perhaps influenced by Marx's ideas of "lower" and "upper" stages of socialism, later used the word "socialism" as a transitional stage between capitalism and communism.

So, in what way is government-run universal health care access NOT socialist?

Why do advocates of socialism react so strongly (i.e. equating the word to "racist") when their socialist schemes are identified for what they are? If government control of economic activity is a good thing, a thought which is at the foundation of socialism, then why do socialists run so fast from the word?

It's because socialism doesn't work. Everywhere it's tried, socialism degenerates into either an apathetic welfare state, like Europe, or metastasizes into a totalitarian dictatorship, like Nazi Germany, the USSR, countless third-world dictatorships, or at best modern-day China. Socialism destroys wealth, but worse--it destroys the human spirit. And, all too often, it kills millions of people.

Socialism does not work.

He's one of America's most eminent economists and observers of American society. Here's what he has to say about the current health care stampede (btw the best word I've yet seen for this manufactured "crisis"):

It is not just a question of what the government will pay for. The logic of their collectivist thinking— and the actual practice in some other countries with government-controlled health care— is that you cannot even pay for some medical treatments with your own money, if the powers that be decide that "society" cannot let its resources be used that way, or that it would not be "social justice" for some people to have medical treatments that others cannot get, just because some people "happen to have money."

The medical care stampede is about much more than medical care, important as that is. It is part of a whole mindset of many on the left who have never reconciled themselves to an economic system in which how much people can withdraw from the resources of the nation depends on how much they have contributed to those resources.

Despite the cleverness of phrases about people who "happen to have money," very few people just happen to have money. Most people earned their money by supplying other people with goods or services that those people were willing to pay for.

Since it is their own money that they have earned, these people feel free to spend it to give their 80-year-old grandmother another year or two of life, or to pay for a hip replacement operation for their mom or dad, even If some medical "ethicist" might say that the resources of "society" would be better used to allow some 20-year-old to talk over his angst with a shrink.

Oh, sorry. Sowell is black, so he's obviously a race-traitor, Uncle Tom type, right? Because any opposition to the will of Obama is by definition racist, right? So there's no point in actually listening to what this black man says, right?

Breitbart passes along an Associated Press (hiss, said the crowd in the balcony) article about a State Department worker indicted for snooping on the passport applications of over a hundred celebrities.

But your most personal medical records kept in a government repository will be safe and secure. Nobody will ever know that embarassing incident a few years ago that a timely course of antibiotics handled quite nicely. And quietly.

Yep.

Randall Hoven notes at the American Thinker:

In the 1990s, Republicans tried to change Medicare into a defined-contribution model, more along the lines of the plan that federal employees enjoy. The Republican-controlled Congress passed such legislation in 1995, but President Clinton vetoed it. Seeing the future impacts of Medicare costs, President Clinton set up a bipartisan Medicare Commission headed by John Breaux (D-LA). The Breaux Commission came up with a similar plan in 1999. Democrats killed that too.

When Republicans did have everything but a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, 2003-06, they gave us Health Savings Accounts and prescription coverage under Medicare (although I was against the latter). Given Democrats were not shy about using the filibuster, those were significant achievements.

More recently, Republican precursors to the Patients' Choice Act were introduced in the House in July 2007, May 2008 and September 2008. All died in the Democrat-controlled House. There is also the Health Care Freedom Act (S. 1324) introduced in the Senate this June by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC).

Why don't I know anything more about these Republican plans? More importantly, why don't you?

Required reading for anyone who wants to intelligently discuss the American health care system, from David Goldhill, at The Atlantic, an exceptionally important article, I think. I've excerpted only a small portion of it. But you need to hit the link above and read it all. (Everything in bold is my emphasis.)

I’m a Democrat, and have long been concerned about America’s lack of a health safety net. But based on my own work experience, I also believe that unless we fix the problems at the foundation of our health system—largely problems of incentives—our reforms won’t do much good, and may do harm. To achieve maximum coverage at acceptable cost with acceptable quality, health care will need to become subject to the same forces that have boosted efficiency and value throughout the economy. We will need to reduce, rather than expand, the role of insurance; focus the government’s role exclusively on things that only government can do (protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe, enforce safety standards, and ensure provider competition); overcome our addiction to Ponzi-scheme financing, hidden subsidies, manipulated prices, and undisclosed results; and rely more on ourselves, the consumers, as the ultimate guarantors of good service, reasonable prices, and sensible trade-offs between health-care spending and spending on all the other good things money can buy.

. . .

The housing bubble offers some important lessons for health-care policy. The claim that something—whether housing or health care—is an undersupplied social good is commonly used to justify government intervention, and policy makers have long striven to make housing more affordable. But by making housing investments eligible for special tax benefits and subsidized borrowing rates, the government has stimulated not only the construction of more houses but also the willingness of people to borrow and spend more on houses than they otherwise would have. The result is now tragically clear.

. . .

But health insurance is different from every other type of insurance. Health insurance is the primary payment mechanism not just for expenses that are unexpected and large, but for nearly all health-care expenses. We’ve become so used to health insurance that we don’t realize how absurd that is. We can’t imagine paying for gas with our auto-insurance policy, or for our electric bills with our homeowners insurance, but we all assume that our regular checkups and dental cleanings will be covered at least partially by insurance. Most pregnancies are planned, and deliveries are predictable many months in advance, yet they’re financed the same way we finance fixing a car after a wreck—through an insurance claim.

. . .

In designing Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, the government essentially adopted this comprehensive-insurance model for its own spending, and by the next year had enrolled nearly 12 percent of the population. And it is no coinci­dence that the great inflation in health-care costs began soon after. We all believe we need comprehensive health insurance because the cost of care—even routine care—appears too high to bear on our own. But the use of insurance to fund virtually all care is itself a major cause of health care’s high expense.

Insurance is probably the most complex, costly, and distortional method of financing any activity; that’s why it is otherwise used to fund only rare, unexpected, and large costs. Imagine sending your weekly grocery bill to an insurance clerk for review, and having the grocer reimbursed by the insurer to whom you’ve paid your share. An expensive and wasteful absurdity, no?

. . .

Perhaps the greatest problem posed by our health-insurance-driven regime is the sense it creates that someone else is actually paying for most of our health care—and that the costs of new benefits can also be borne by someone else. Unfortunately, there is no one else.

. . .

Keeping prices opaque is one way medical institutions seek to avoid competition and thereby keep prices up. And they get away with it in part because so few consumers pay directly for their own care—insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid are basically the whole game. But without transparency on prices—and the related data on measurable outcomes—efforts to give the consumer more control over health care have failed, and always will.

. . .

The most important single step we can take toward truly reforming our system is to move away from comprehensive health insurance as the single model for financing care. And a guiding principle of any reform should be to put the consumer, not the insurer or the government, at the center of the system. I believe if the government took on the goal of better supporting consumers—by bringing greater transparency and competition to the health-care industry, and by directly subsidizing those who can’t afford care—we’d find that consumers could buy much more of their care directly than we might initially think, and that over time we’d see better care and better service, at lower cost, as a result.

. . .

How would we pay for most of our health care? The same way we pay for everything else—out of our income and savings. Medicare itself is, in a sense, a form of forced savings, as is commercial insurance. In place of these programs and the premiums we now contribute to them, and along with catastrophic insurance, the government should create a new form of health savings account—a vehicle that has existed, though in imperfect form, since 2003. Every American should be required to maintain an HSA, and contribute a minimum percentage of post-tax income, subject to a floor and a cap in total dollar contributions. The income percentage required should rise over a working life, as wages and wealth typically do.

All noncatastrophic care should eventually be funded out of HSAs. But account-holders should be allowed to withdraw money for any purpose, without penalty, once the funds exceed a ceiling established for each age, and at death any remaining money should be disbursed through inheritance. Our current methods of health-care funding create a “use it or lose it” imperative. This new approach would ensure that families put aside funds for future expenses, but would not force them to spend the funds only on health care.

If you want to fix health care delivery in the USA, this article would be an excellent place to start.

A fascinating tale of a conservative who boarded a liberal-organized bus headed to Obama's Grand Junction dog-and-pony show.

When we arrived in Grand Junction we drove straight to the high school. The gal who was in charge, a twenty something cutie with passion in her face, got on the sound system and said to the group that it was our job to respect the anti obama demonstrators. She was very clear that we were not to interfere with their free speech. I was so impressed by her clarity, confidence, and willingness to be the hard nosed leader of the group. She said that if anyone became too inflamed she would take them out of the group and not let them demonstrate and our goal was to be upbeat, positive, and confident.

Who can argue with that? I told Paul last night that I just felt like crying as she talked. I was so touched. This is AMERICA. We all have free speech and in attempting to debate, shake up, and break down old systems of thinking...sometimes emotions get frayed and tempers can overwhelm. During the whole event I saw much more rage coming from those opposed to Obamacare than from the Democrat Activist side.

This is illustrated in the video montage I made for Huffington Post.

When the event was over, we all piled back on the bus and Senator Bennett came to speak to everyone. He was very grateful that they all came to the event. I could not hear what he said, but I could tell it meant alot to them that he was there to talk to them.

As for who was astroturfing, the Conservative side simply had home made signs and a few speakerphones. They were all on foot, and I saw no bus loads of people showing up to demonstrate with them. It was all just individuals and families. I did hear one young man yell that Obama was an f'ing n word before he took off on his bike. I thought he was a coward and a bully. Another young teenage girl was yelling F you and flipping the bird as she demonstrated against the dems. I did not see any of this type of behavior from the Democrat activists. They were all laughing and singing along with the music and ignoring the racial and profane slurs being shoved on them. I was a little embarassed to see the conservative side being so rude, and it was a good wake up call to stand back and see how we present ourselves from the other side of the street.

I think almost everyone really wants the best for most everyone else. It's just that there's such a wide gap of disagreement in how we can accomplish the goal of making everyone's lives better.

I firmly believe that you make other people's lives better FIRST by making yourself better, and only secondarily by making others more capable of handling their own lives. There is far too much blame-shifting in society today, and far too little responsibility-taking. People must take control of their own lives, and by that I mean every single aspect of their lives--their diet, their exercise, their social life, how they relate to friends, to families, to neighbors, and to everyone else. If you don't control yourself, don't *censored* to me or anyone else that someone else finds it necessary to control your behavior. Don't expect somebody else to pay for your mistakes.

On a related note--the extent to which you depend on someone else for your life and happiness is the extent to which you will be an unhappy person. Learn self-reliance. Learn self-respect. Learn how to positively interact with others. Those are the basic life skills for a happy and productive life.

You have more power over your life than you realize you do.

Use your power on yourself. Grow. Be a free person, not a serf.