My Thought On Latest Health Care Bill

Scroll down for animated version
of what I call O-Trauma Care!
See Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution who seems to have coined "O-Trauma-Care" on 4 March 2014, before I independently came up with that term.

Ira Glickstein

Loving a Different America

[From Billlifka, reproduced by prior permission]

Past NYC Mayor and Presidential Candidate, Rudy Giuliani, has many speaking engagements. I’ve heard him and he’s good.

However, he goofed in a recent oration by expressing his belief that President Obama doesn’t love America. 

A firestorm erupted, especially in the media and in hastily organized interviews of Liberal politicians.

A few Conservative pundits and politicians went beyond a concerned tut-tut when cornered by the media. In saying bad things about Obama any speaker will be called unpatriotic and, in consideration of his skin color, a racist.

I think the Mayor was in error for saying what he said but I think he was half right.

Giuliani’s problem was he failed to define his terms properly, a common custom of politicians. I agree with the many indignant leftists that it’s impossible to know what’s in a person’s heart. On the other hand, I think a person’s words and actions provide compelling clues to cardio-content.

I believe Mr. Obama loves the America he knows. 

I believe he has no liking at all for the America that I know and is doing his best (or worst) to eliminate that America. 

In that intent, he has many powerful forces as his allies, along with many dupes. Many of the allies don’t love my America and many of the dupes haven’t a clue. Mr. Obama’s America was defined by associates who hated my America, from his boyhood through college and his years in Chicago before becoming U.S. Senator. They guaranteed his America would be very different than mine. In the White House, he’s surrounded by sycophants who have experienced an America similar to his and, certainly, would not oppose their idol’s viewpoint on anything. He has been coddled by the intelligentsia, media, entertainment industry, race profiteers, some professional black athletes and leaders of various organizations aiming to get special presidential favors from him. These include the usual activist groups and the heads of large unions and large corporations. Mr. Obama has never had to take responsibility for his lies, deceptions, obfuscations, illegal acts or mistakes, a few of which have been catastrophic in impact. He is protected from punishment by his political team, ideological admirers and the complicit media. ...

Regardless of their feelings toward him and his policies, Generals and Admirals kowtow to him as if their jobs depend on it, which they do.

It appears Mr. Obama leads an exemplary family life. 

This provides deniability for charges that his frequent White House guests are foul-mouthed rappers who denigrate women and other entertainment industry celebrities who achieve fame by presenting immorality as acceptable and commonplace behavior. He socializes with multimillionaires whose patronage will guarantee his own economic well-being after white House years while pushing for higher taxation, knowing he will grant offsetting favors for these rich friends in return for political contributions. He transfers the property of hard-working middle class citizens to make life more pleasant for needy folks, a goodly number of whom could jettison their neediness if they’d work.

All-in-all, Mr. Obama has a pleasant life in his America; it’s no mystery that he loves it. 

The America I know is very different but I love it too. 

As a Cub Scout saluting the America flag, I learned that war clouds were gathering over the rest of the world and our nation was relatively safe from war on its continent. My father’s salary placed us slightly above the poverty level (if there had been such distinctions at that time) but we were happy he had remained employed though the Great Depression years. We suspected the hard times didn’t come from some defect in America (it was worse in other parts of the world). There were crazies who ranted against the banks and corporations but normal people didn’t listen to them; banks were the source of loans and corporations provided the jobs. As kids we understood that, as poor as we were, we had a good shot at personal prosperity if we qualified for a good job and worked hard at it. This chance had nothing to do with our economic or social class. It did depend on a good education and we had an equal shot at that also. We learned to be good people (morally) if we were to advance ourselves and were motivated in that direction by the carrot of heaven and the stick of hell.

I began to understand one price of Americanism as older cousins returned home to recuperate from war wounds. It was our responsibility to go to the aid of friendly countries as two of them had come to America’s aid in its founding war. In the smaller war to follow, I donned a uniform of my country and was proud to serve on active duty. That pride is one element of my love. In all the armed engagements since, I am reminded of that pride and love by the exploits of our troops. Freedom is not free. There will be future wars to test our pride in and our love for America.

I had studied history in school and read many history texts for personal interest and enjoyment. Whether American, European, Modern, Medieval or Ancient, all readings increased my love for a country which was so unique to all locations and all time. I learned more about America, how it came to be and what it is. It’s a place, of course. More than that, it’s a group of people. Since the people are all colors, religions and descended from all parts of the globe, it’s more than people. I concluded that America is a concept expressed in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States and the first ten amendments to that Constitution and put into practice by very ordinary people.

These ordinary people have implemented the concept in an extraordinary manner which is not to say their execution has been without faults. There’ve been many, including the manner in which African/American citizens eventually were granted the equality to which they were entitled.

Underlying the concept and implementation of America were three societal foundations:

• JudeoChristian morality (behavior),
• A market economy and
• Representative democracy. 

These are the major ingredients of the America I love along with the limited central government that is defined in the body of the U.S. Constitution. I’m quite certain that Mr. Obama and his cohorts (including the mostly Progressive bureaucrats in the Executive Branch) have been intentionally attacking each of these in major ways and with dismaying success and turning the America I love into the America that Mr. Obama loves. Extremist Muslims have formed brigades of believers willing to die for their religious/political ideology by repetitive and restrictive teaching of their young. So also, Progressives are in the majority in American professions that influence the young (ages one to thirty). Mr. Obama’s America is at war with my America and I wonder which America you choose to love?

Billlifka

WHAT IS IMPORTANT?

[From billlifka – Posted with his permission. Images added by Ira]

Influx of Latin Children >>>










SEX IN THE TOWN SQUARE GAZEBO
It’s been an exciting week in the Villages. A 68 year old woman was interrupted by the sheriff’s police having sex with a man young enough to be her son. Both were inebriated. Their mistake was to choose a town square gazebo as their trysting spot so they were hauled off to jail. I’m guessing their defense will be similar to the question of whether a tree falling in the middle of a dense forest makes any noise. The event was at 10:30 PM which is 1 ½ hours after the sidewalks are rolled up on the square. As for the police, I doubt if they were traumatized at the sight. The event, itself, wasn’t all that exciting but it was published in our dot-com newsletter (http://www.villages-news.com/) with pictures and details. It’s the opposite of the local paper which only prints the good news. Both are quite professional but the electronic one encourages immediate reader feedback. As you can imagine, there were many reader comments. Amazingly, quite a few were of a serious nature.


TRIAL OF LARGER-SIZED GOLF HOLES
One more dot-com-encouraged subject of intense debate was the decision to have a trial of larger sized golf holes on one of the nine-hole courses. The way that one is going, I think there may be a request for a formal hearing before the International PGA Board.


UNSIGNED LETTERS ABOUT DIRTY CURBS
A little closer to home, some mysterious local person wrote unsigned letters to three households in our Village chastising them for having dirty curbs along their section of road. It has become a subject of intense oral and electronic debate over who might be responsible for such “hate” mail.


PARKING PROBLEMS AND FLORIDA TURNPIKE ACCESS
In fact, there are many current, important happenings here. Examples include: a major hospital expansion which poses a huge parking problem; a major expansion of the Church on the Square and change to a Performing Arts Theatre which poses a huge parking problem; a decision to stop plans for a direct connector to the Florida Turnpike in favor of improving the routing through a small, local city, likely at the behest of favored persons and businesses. I could go on. None are earthshaking issues but all have much greater consequence than the first named matters.


As you may have guessed, this isn’t a news bulletin but another comment on human nature.
 
FRUITS OF PRESIDENT OBAMA’S PULLOUT FROM IRAQ
In the same period those earth-shaking events were occurring in The Villages a few important events were in progress around the world. The fruits of Obama’s pullout from Iraq ripened and are being harvested. Militant Sunni fighters captured important Cities (over which much American blood was spilled) on the way to Baghdad and creation of a Caliphate home to terrorists bound by religious vow to terrorize America.


POSSIBLE MUSLIM EXTREMIST ACCESS TO PAKISTANI NUKES
Taliban successes in Pakistan foretold the day when those Muslim extremists will control the third largest cache of nuclear weapons. (The challenge is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.)


INFLUX OF 90,000 to 250,000 LATIN CHILDREN [Image top right]
Closer to home, seemingly less daunting, were 90,000 Latin children dumped over the border into America. They have been made our problem and the prediction is that next year’s annual rate of child dumping will be 250,000.


I could go on.


THE PRESIDENT’S RESPONSE
The president’s answer is, “I’ve instructed my people to come up with options to deal with it.” Off he flies to a fund-raiser in California. These were also his words and actions at the time of the Benghazi disaster and nothing has happened except major efforts by the Administration to stonewall and obfuscate. Hillary was a major player in all these major blunders. If America was a professional sports team, Barry and Hillary would’ve been fired long ago. As my own beloved Villagers demonstrate, Americans seem to have lost a capacity to focus on what’s important.

billlifka  

IRS and NSA Controversies

In recent months, the Obama administration has been plagued by several serious controversies, chief among them:

• Charges of political profiling by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in delaying the approval of tax exemption under § 501 (c)(4) to some "patriotic" organizations, and


• Large-scale domestic snooping by the National Security Agency (NSA) according to Top Secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

You may download my PowerPoint presentation (Philosophy Club, The Villages, FL, 5 July 2013) here: https://sites.google.com/site/bigira/philosophy-related-pps/Philo%20IRS%20NSA%20July%202013.pptx?attredirects=0&d=1

IRS POLITICAL PROFILING CONTROVERSY

According to the May 2013 report by the US Treasury Department Inspector General (IG) for Tax Administration (.pdf available here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2013/05/201310053fr-revised-redacted-1.pdf ), starting in 2010 and continuing through 2012 and two election cycles, "inappropriate criteria were used to identify tax-exempt applications for review".

The IG Report identified some specific inappropriate criteria including "Patriots", "Tea Party", "Issues include government spending, government debt or taxes", "Education of the public by advocacy/lobbying 'to make America a better place to live'", and "Statement in the case file criticize how the country is being run". [exact quotes, including grammatical errors]

The result was that some applications submitted by Liberal groups were approved for § 501 (c)(4) while otherwise identical applications by Conservative groups were forwarded to a team of "specialists" and thus delayed for years.

According to the IG Report:

Organizations that applied for tax-exempt status and had their applications forwarded to the team
of specialists experienced substantial delays. As of December 17, 2012, many organizations had
not received an approval or denial letter for more than two years after they submitted their
applications. Some cases have been open during two election cycles (2010 and 2012). [my bold]

On 13 May 2013, a day before the IG Report was issued, President Obama stated that the practice was "Outrageous, if true."

The next day, when it was clear that the charges were indeed true, Obama followed up stating:

"The IRS must apply the law in a fair and impartial way, and its employees must act with utmost integrity.

“This report shows that some [IRS] employees failed that test. I’ve directed Secretary Lew to hold those responsible for these failures accountable, … so that such conduct never happens again.

“But regardless of how this conduct was allowed to take place, the bottom line is, it was wrong."

The IG Report included a detailed list of some of the "unnecessary" questions asked of targeted organizations by the "specialists" to delay approval.

1 Requests the names of donors. 2 Requests a list of all issues that are important to the organization and asks that the organization indicate its position regarding such issues. 3 Requests 1) the roles and activities of the audience and participants other than members in the activity and 2) the type of conversations and discussions members and participants had during the activity. 4 Asks whether the officer, director, etc., has run or will run for public office. 5 Requests the political affiliation of the officer, director, speakers, candidates supported, etc., or otherwise refers to the relationship with identified political party–related organizations. 6 Requests information regarding employment, other than for the organization, including hours worked. 7 Requests information regarding activities of another organization – not just the relationship of the other organization to the applicant.

Were "Progressive" Organizations also Targeted?

The Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee published what they said was evidence that "progressive" groups were also targeted (.pdf available here: http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/files/November%202010%20BOLO%20IRS0000001349-IRS0000001364.pdf).

Indeed, the term "Progressive" does appear on a spreadsheet utilized by the IRS reviewers, however, that line of the spreadsheet applies only to § 501 (c)(3) applications, which are very different from the 501 (c)(4) applications that are the main object of the IRS political profiling controversy.

As the IG Report makes clear, § 501 (c)(3) organizations may NOT "engage in political campaign intervention" while § 501 (c)(4) groups may do so up to 40% of their activities. Another difference is that contributions to § 501 (c)(3) groups ARE tax deductible by the donors while § 501 (c)(4) are NOT tax deductible by the donors.

The House Ways and Means Democrats include one example of a "Tea Party" group that appears on an IRS spreadsheet, but careful observation shows that that line applies to BOTH § 501 (c)(3) and § 501 (c)(4) groups. It should be obvious that tax exemption should not be allowed for donors for any "political campaign intervention", whether Liberal or Conservative.

Thus, there is no evidence that "Progressive" groups were subjected to any profiling related to § 501 (c)(4), while it is clear, even from the IRS spreadsheet example published by the Democrats, that such profiling was inappropriately applied to Conservative groups.

Should ANY "Political" Organizations Enjoy BOTH Tax-Exemption AND Anonymity for their Donors?

In reviewing this controversy, I wondered why the IRS allows MAJOR DONORS to make ANONYMOUS contributions to ANY tax-exempt organization that engages in any form of "political campaign intervention" (be it Liberal or Conservative) .

Well, it turns out that this strange rule dates from the 1958 Supreme Court decision regarding the NAACP vs Alabama (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAACP_v._Alabama) where the Supremes ruled that disclosure of names could render private donors vulnerable to retaliation.

OK, if that is the Law of the Land, so be it, but it should be applied EQUALLY to both Liberal and Conservative groups. Don't you think?

In this case, IRS political profiling, targeting Conservative groups, over two election cycles (2010 and 2012), has almost certainly resulted in a net benefit for Liberal organizations in terms of fund-raising, because some donors will justifiably hesitate to contribute to any organization that has not been approved by the IRS for tax-exempt status.

Has this affected election results at the National level (House, Senate, Presidency), and/or local levels (Governors, State Legislators, etc.)? No one will ever know for sure, but I would think at least some close elections could have gone the other way absent IRS targeting of Conservative "political campaign intervention" groups.

NSA SNOOPING CONTROVERSY

Which brings us to the second part of this (admittedly long) topic posting.

The reason I have linked the IRS and NSA controversies should be painfully obvious:

If any Administration, whether Democrat or Republican, misuses an agency of the government for political profiling purposes, as the Democrats have clearly misused the IRS for two election cycles, how can we trust them not to similarly misuse the awesome snooping powers we now know have been entrusted to the NSA ?

We all know that Edward Snowden, an employee of an NSA contractor, went to Hong Kong (controlled by China) and released several TOP SECRET documents revealing that the NSA has engaged in large-scale domestic snooping. There is no doubt that all TOP SECRET materials contained on the laptop computers and other computer media he had with him have been downloaded by the Chinese and are now in their possession. Snowden subsequently went to Russia, and has been there long enough for the Russians to have downloaded all material he had with him. Also, there is no doubt that both the Chinese and Russians have interrogated Snowden thoroughly and extracted the critical TOP SECRET NSA information that he possessed.  

After the NSA leak was made public by Snowden, President Obama assured the American public:

“… nobody is listening to your telephone calls… 

“… you can't have 100 percent security, and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We're going to have to make some choices as a society… 

"I don't welcome leaks … There's a reason these programs are classified." [my bold and italic]

Please note that I have bolded the President's word "Nobody". Does that mean no person is listening to our telephone calls (and that no person is reading our emails and other computer communications)?

For example, what if some automatic computer program was listening to our telephone calls (and emails) and searching for some combinations of words that might indicate criminal or terroristic intent? And, only if and when the computer program discovered some suspicious messages and identified the people involved, then the NSA went to the FISA court to get a warrant to have some person listen to phone calls (and emails) to and from the identified persons?

I have also bolded and italicized the word "is". As President Bill Clinton famously observed, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

Is Obama assuring us that nobody is listening to our phone calls (and emails) right now? What if our phone calls (and emails) are being automatically recorded and stored away by the NSA for future use if and when subsequent analysis reveals that they may relate to suspicious activities and then the NSA gets a FISA warrant to have some person listen to them?

That said, I agree with Obama that we cannot expect "100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience" and maintain reasonable security against criminal and terrorist attacks. Like him, given this difficult choice, I come down on the side of security.

What do we know about NSA snooping?

Started as early as 2006 (under G.W. Bush), continued through present (2008-2013 under Obama).

Key members of Senate and Congress are aware of classified details of NSA programs and exercise oversight. Judicial oversight is exercised by FISA court.

MetaData is being collected on virtually ALL domestic home phone and cellphone calls (at least the Calling number, Called number, Date, Time, Duration, …) Internet data (VoIP, Emails, Chat, Photos, Videos, Files, Stored Data [“cloud”], Logins, SPECIAL REQUESTS, …)

What do I suspect about NSA snooping?

I’ve worked on classified military projects, but never NSA projects or any projects related to surveillance or data mining, so I am free to “speculate” without revealing classified information.

Based on my knowledge of electronics and computers and the Internet and “artificial intelligence” I never type anything into my computer that I would not mind seeing on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper or TV news!

For many years I have suspected that NSA (not to mention Google :^) has metadata on all Internet activity and phone calls and that they utilize advanced data mining algorithms to associate Phone numbers, Email addresses, Blogs, Social networks, and so on.

It is also likely they use “artificial intelligence” and “key word analysis” computer techniques to “gist” voice phone calls, looking for languages and word combinations that may indicate criminal or terrorist activities as well as semantic analysis to identify individual writing styles. It is also likely they similarly “gist” Emails, Blogs, Photos and other Internet data and use facial recognition, voice prints, and other biometrics to associate multi-modal communications with particular groups of people and individuals.

Bottom Line

I (along with Obama) am appalled that Edward Snowden violated his pledge to protect classified government documents. Internal government processes (and specialized lawyers) exist for reporting abuses. Snowden should have used these before going to China and before revealing these Top Secret activities to the press. (Hong Kong is an “autonomous” region under the control of China.) We should assume China and Russia have all Snowden’s NSA data.

I generally SUPPORT all the known and most of my suspected NSA snooping activities, assuming proper oversight. As I’ve stated in presentations to The Villages Philosophy Club and my Novel and Blogs, advocates of “privacy” are fighting a phony and lost battle. If you have a home and a job and a credit card and a cellphone and a car – in other words if you are a “respectable” citizen – YOU HAVE NO “PRIVACY”. (The only person with real privacy is the guy using your stolen credit card to buy stuff!)

However, the IRS scandal has increased my distrust of the government. I worry that POLITICALLY-motivated NSA employees may abuse Phone and Internet data for partisan purposes (as some IRS employees have done).

Get the PowerPoint Presentation!

If you'd like more technical background on the "six degrees of separation" between (virtually) any two people on Earth and on the issue of privacy in the Internet age, please download the PowerPoint presentation I gave to the Philosophy Club of The Villages, FL.

Please download that PowerPoint here: https://sites.google.com/site/bigira/philosophy-related-pps/Philo%20IRS%20NSA%20July%202013.pptx?attredirects=0&d=1,

Feel free to express your opinions on this issue by posting a Comment to this Blog.


advTHANKSance

Ira Glickstein 

 

Uncle Sam's Illness

"Dr. Mitt", Uncle Sam, and "Dr. Barry"
A Responsible Approach vs Hopey Changey Happy Pills

[from billlifka[ I have a deceased uncle (let’s call him Sam) who was a heavy smoker. He was feeling poorly and a doctor diagnosed his condition as an advanced case of lung cancer. Sam didn’t want to hear that so he went to several other doctors who delivered the same verdict, along with the prognosis of an early, painful death.

 

One of these, Doctor Mitt, was quite experienced in the field and had cured many cancer patients before. He promised Sam that he could be cured if he were willing to undergo treatment that would be very uncomfortable for a time but would return him to robust health as he had enjoyed before he became addicted to smoking. The treatment would require that Sam cease smoking immediately and submit to chemotherapy and radiation. His hair would fall out, temporarily, he’d be extremely nauseous most of the time and he’d lose much weight. On the other hand, Dr. Mitt would prescribe modest doses of pain killers and a special diet of food and food supplements that would build up Sam’s total body to offset much of the damage to the localized cancer area.

 

Sam considered this advice but sought an easier solution. 

In all professions, there are practitioners who tell their clients what they want to hear. Usually, they are successful in their practices since most humans want to hear what they want to hear. And so it was that Sam was able to find other doctors who told him just the opposite of what Dr. Mitt and others of his persuasion had told him.

 

Principal among these was Dr. Barry who was a glib, handsome devil who was very popular with his patients, especially the ladies. Dr. Barry said all that discomfiture was unnecessary and, most likely, was bad; even a little bit of suffering caused patients to lose hope and hope was known to be the best medicine for any kind of ailment. Giving up smoking, according to Dr. Barry, was also bad; resultant unhappiness was another cause of the loss of hope. He prescribed stronger pain killers that produced a euphoric feeling in Sam for several months. 

After a few months, the stronger pain killers and the continued smoking didn’t make Sam any better. In fact, his condition steadily worsened and he spent an extremely painful eight months until his early death. To the end he recommended Dr. Barry to friends and associates as a doctor who cared deeply for his patients. 

This is a true story but I’ve changed the names of my uncle and the doctors to protect the guilty and the innocent. You might have noticed the similarity between my real uncle’s story and the on-going story of our Uncle Sam. My uncle’s immediate family members were enablers to him in his choice of a comfortable short term over a successful long term cure. Currently, Americans have the opportunity to enable their Uncle Sam to continue in his rotten habits that feel good in the very short term but will lead to his painful death in the slightly longer term. They have an alternate opportunity to restore him to full health and a long life. Which will it be? 

This analogy may offend some but it’s dead on. Just because one is a lemming doesn’t mean that one must follow one’s leader over a cliff. Many lemmings are credits to their species and have the intelligence to know a cliff is ahead and it’s time to ease themselves to the sides of their pack and not get swept over in the crowd. It will allow their species to survive, which should be high on their list of instincts. Their next step should be to select a leader with more common sense.

 

billlifka                                  

Obamacare, Justice Roberts, and King Solomon

[from Billlifka]

President Obama has had difficulty deciding which past president he resembles the most in his traits and actions. King Solomon might be a better model. Like all ancient kings, Solomon was chief, lawmaker and judge, all at the same time. This posting is about Solomon-like wisdom but not about Obama, directly. Instead, it suggests that Chief Justice Roberts may be very wise and not as wimpy as Liberals think of him now or traitorous as Conservatives think of him, post-ruling.

THE SUPREME COURT OBAMACARE RULING

The ruling determined whether Obamacare was unconstitutional as claimed by a majority of the states and other associated organizations. To most Americans (who don’t know better) and most media folks (who should know better) this meant that the Supreme Court would decide whether the law was a good one or a bad one. Also, they thought (for good reason) that the court would decide along ideological lines; which is to say that the four Liberal justices would praise the law as inspired legislation and the four conservative justices would damn the law as the devil’s work. The only question was how the “swing” Justice would vote. As it turned out, the praising and the damning went as expected but with the “swinger” being a damner and the “Conservative” Chief Justice being a damner but sustaining the constitutionality of the law. It was not the 5:4 or 4:5 ruling expected but one the WSJ termed a 1:4:4 decision, and aptly so.

Generally, pundits had failed to explain the argument for constitutionality wasn’t based solely on the mandated penalty for non-insured citizens being justified by the Constitution’s commerce clause. This is what Democrats argued at the time of passage. If allowed by the Court, a Pandora’s box of evils would be opened for use in future legislation, which was as bad or worse than Obamacare itself, in Conservative opinion. Indeed, the Conservative four pointed out all the bad things while deciding that the commerce clause could not be used as Liberals had argued. Chief Justice Roberts agreed with the Conservatives so a commerce clause application is barred from expanded usage. Also, Roberts agreed that the federal government couldn’t penalize the states for disobeying federal orders to increase Medicaid, thus satisfying another Conservative wish and providing another important limitation. However, surprising all, Roberts declared the mandate to be a tax and, therefore, fell within the constitutional power of Congress to levy.

It was a stretch of legal reasoning, at best. However, the Solicitor General, arguing the case for the Justice Department, had used the tax argument as justification and a Court is obligated to consider all arguments. It was clear that Roberts knew he was stretching; his opinion exempted the mandate from falling under other tax rules or regulations. Obama had insisted, in dozens of speeches before the ruling and now after the ruling, that the mandate is not a tax and that there are no taxes on citizens in Obamacare. It’s one of his bigger lies since 21 taxes have been uncovered in the 2700+ pages so far. Most are on other entities that will pass the cost of taxes on to the consumer. However, one is a 3.8% tax on the sale of real estate and this hits the consumer directly in 2013, after the election. Also, the bill provides for the hiring of 6000 IRS agents to enforce the bill’s tax provisions. It was necessary to lie about taxes before or the bill would never have passed, even in the Democrat controlled Congress. Nancy Pelosi says she doesn’t care how they won, just that they did. It’s what we’ve come to expect of her and her cohorts.

ARGUMENT THAT ROBERTS EXHIBITED THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON

The favorite story of King Solomon emphasizes his legendary wisdom. It relates how two came before him, each claiming to be the mother of the same child. Both had plausible stories to back their claims. Solomon ruled that a fair solution was to cut the baby in two and give half to each woman. One woman broke into tears at the judgment and insisted that the whole baby be given to the other woman. Solomon then changed his decision to give the whole baby to the woman who was willing to give it up rather than see the baby killed. In his opinion, only the true mother would sacrifice everything for the life of her child.

There’s a plausible argument that Chief Justice John Roberts exhibited the wisdom of Solomon in the 1:4:4 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court declaring Obamacare legal. That is the minority opinion of the political pundits by a wide margin. (That Roberts was wise in his ruling.) The best that liberal talking heads can say is he’s a wimp for caving to the political backlash planned by Obama and his campaign advisors if the law were to be ruled unconstitutional. Conservative talking heads have nothing good to say about a Justice they now consider to be a traitor.

One clue to the Chief Justice’s motivation, if not his legal reasoning, is contained in his written opinion for the majority, “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” What a refreshing but frightening view. The Supreme Court, under Roberts, is not going to protect citizens from decisions of Congress just because those decisions are stupid, nor is it going to protect Congress from the results of its own stupid decisions. If citizens don’t like what Congress does, they must accept the stupidity or vote it out of office. We, the people, must accept Constitutional responsibility and use the collective voice and vote to reverse the mistakes. And the same applies to a president who is so narcissistic as to refer to the stupidly named Affordable Health Care Law as, “the law I passed.”

The Chief Justice is rendering America a great service in many ways under-appreciated by pundits and people. Right from the beginning he has made a consistent effort for the Court to narrow its rulings rather than make sweeping decisions to expand the coverage of a constitutional clause or statute far beyond its language. He abhors legislating from the bench. He believes the Court has a responsibility to maintain the balance of power between the branches of government as the Founders intended to safeguard the rights of citizens. He has labored to soften the ideological clashes in the Court, in sharp contrast to words and actions of the president, legislators, media and the people. Under Roberts’ leadership, 44% of the Court’s decisions have been unanimous and another 11% have had a single dissenter. Only 20% have been decided 5:4.

Diehard Liberals are greatly angered by such even-handedness. Diehard Conservatives are angrier; this was supposed to be a Conservative Court. If one considers what a Conservative Court really is to do, the Roberts Court comes close to the target. But what about this truly terrible bill that doubles down on all the bad things in American health care and adds a whole slew of new bad things? It would be nice if America had Referendum at a national level. (In addition to Recall and Initiative) But it does exist; except it’s called “election”. November is the time when people can start the reversing of this really stupid law, if they’re not stupid, also.

Billlifka

No OIL in Afghanistan - Redux

Way back in 2009, I posted No OIL in Afghanistan along with the graphic shown here, making three key points:

• 1-IRAQ "...history will conclude our actions in Iraq were justified to assure a level of stability in a country that has a large percentage of the world's oil. The Iraq War was necessary for the stability and progress of the world's economy and for something like peace in a historically turbulent region."
• 2-AFGHANISTAN "... Given the terrain, population and history of Afghanistan, there is nothing to be gained by adding more US blood to that already left by the British in the 1800's and the Russians more recently."
• 3-IRAN "... if Iran continues to build its nuclear weapons program, the US and our allies will have to take military action of some sort. That country has a large percentage of the world's supply of oil and it is therefore important to keep it stable and peaceful."

Now, in 2012, over two years and too many American and allied lives later, I think my reasoning has been validated. As I will show by quoting from my earlier postings, I opposed the Gen. McChrystal (Obama) surge in Afghanistan as strongly as I supported the Gen. Petraus (Bush) surge in Iraq. The Afghan surge, as we should now realize, was doomed to failure because our interests there are tactical and not strategic. Our interests in Iraq are the exact opposite. OIL in Iraq and the absence of OIL or any other strategic material in Afghanistan explains both situations.

It is now beyond time to put Afghanistan on "simmer", protecting a few major population areas with a minimum number of boots on the ground, and continuing to use drones and Special Ops to suppress any Taliban or Al Queda training camps and command centers as well as interrupt supplies to them and protect supplies to the Afghan government. This will minimize our cost in blood and treasure while keeping our enemies from taking control of Afghanistan. It will also protect our interests in keeping Pakistan relatively cooperative.

SOME DIRECT, UNEDITED QUOTES FROM MY 2009 POSTING

Afghanistan Has No OIL

"Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan" (OEF-A) is the official name for our military action in Afghanistan. (The original name was "Operation Infinite Justice" which offended those who believe the source of "infinite justice" is God.)

According to Wikipedia, "The initial military objectives of OEF-A, as articulated by Former President George W. Bush in his Sept. 20th [2001] Address to a Joint Session of Congress and his Oct. 7th [2001] address to the country, included the destruction of terrorist training camps and infrastructure within Afghanistan, the capture of al Queda leaders, and the cessation of terrorist activities in Afghanistan." Multi-national military action began in 2002, just a year after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the US mainland.

The Bush administration has been criticized for emphasizing military action in Iraq, which had little or nothing to do with 9/11, rather than in Afghanistan where the Taliban allowed Al Queda to train the terrorists responsible for 9/11. The Obama administration is now being asked by the commander, Gen. McChrystal, to deploy tens of thousands of additional troops there and repeat an Afghan version of Gen. Petraeus's Iraq surge. As in Iraq, the generals say we need US "boots on the ground" to gain and hold territory.

After much reading and consideration, I have come to the conclusion the US should not greatly increase troop strength now. We should revert to the previous Bush administration policy of a "light footprint" that defends key population centers and uses mainly airborne strikes to prevent the Taliban and whatever remnants of Al Queda remain in Afghanistan from making too much progress. Given the terrain, population and history of Afghanistan, there is nothing to be gained by adding more US blood to that already left by the British in the 1800's and the Russians more recently.

I think history will eventually recognize that the Bush strategy of a relatively low-level war in Afghanistan, where our allies took a large percentage of the responsibility, was correct. Those of you who have played chess know it is sometimes safer to hold back and exercise force from a distance, using your Rooks, Bishops and the Queen on clear diagonals and columns, rather than commit your pawns and Knights to a "boots on the ground" attack.

Iraq, a strategic source of oil, required both boots on the ground and airpower. Afghanistan, especially now that we have unmanned air vehicles capable of pinpoint attacks, should be addressed mostly with remote airpower. I believe VP Biden has been advocating a position similar to mine and that Obama will eventually accept that policy.

Sadly, President Obama did not adopt the "light footprint" with "remote airpower" policy followed by President Bush in Afghanistan, reportedly urged by VP Biden (and me). Instead, he ordered the McChrystal surge, but coupled it with a confused and contrary policy of a date-certain pullout, both with (IMHO) an eye on the 2012 Presidential race rather than the best strategic interests of the USA.

Lots of OIL in IRAN

I hope it does not come down to it, but, if Iran continues to build its nuclear weapons program, the US and our allies will have to take military action of some sort. That country has a large percentage of the world's supply of oil and it is therefore important to keep it stable and peaceful.

But, Iran is not Iraq. There is a considerable level of well-organized internal opposition to the current leadership and the Ayatollahs are not crazy. Perhaps we can persuade the Iranians to take a more reasonable approach. With the cooperation of the Russians and French, Iran can have a peaceful nuclear power program and we can have guarantees it is not directed at nuclear weapons.

Sadly again, President Obama has wasted the first three years of his term with weak leadership of our alliances with Western Europe and Israel and half-hearted sanctions and threats against Iran. He has given no significant support to the internal opposition to the current political and religious leadership in Iran. In the end, this may lead Israel to act in its own defense against what they perceive as an existential threat to their very survival.

PS: There are some 26 Comments at the end of my No OIL in Afghanistan thread, mainly a lively discussion between Howard Pattee and myself. I think that conversation is worth reading now.

Ira Glickstein

Runaway Trolley - Applied to End of Life Issues

The Runaway Trolley thought experiment was introduced in a previous Topic, on this Blog.

The basic lesson was that there are situations where it is quite ethical to take an action that saves (or benefits) a number of people, even if that action has, as an inevitable side effect, the death (or detriment) of a smaller number of people.

This posting has to do with End of Life Issues, and how we might apply the lesson of the Runaway Trolley to the public-funded medical care system. An earlier posting related the Runaway Tolley to Criminal Recidivism

POWERPOINT SHOW AVAILABLE

Click HERE to download a narrated PowerPoint Show that includes animated charts for the Runaway Trolley thought experiment. After the Runaway Trolley is explored, the charts continue and apply the ethical lesson to two real-world issues: 1) Criminal Recidivism and 2) End of Life Issues. The PowerPoint Show is based on a talk I gave to The Philosophy Club at The Villages, FL, on 04 February 2011. NOTE: The Powerpoint Show is Narrated and plays and advances automatically after download to your computer.

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S VIEWS

President Obama, in a moment of unusual candor, expressed his views on end-of-life health care for those with chronic or terminal illness, published in the New York Times Magazine in April 2009. (full text from NY Times website, see section V). I have reproduced the text of that section at the end of this posting. [Some material here is from my earlier posting END-OF-LIFE: Honest Brokers (not Death Panels :^)]

DIRECT OBAMA QUOTES

“… government can … be an honest broker in assessing and evaluating treatment options. … when it comes to Medicare and Medicade, where the taxpayers are footing the bill …

“… using comparative-effectiveness studies as a way of reining in costs, …

“… the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here. …

“…there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. … you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance.”

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S GRANDMOTHER

As a case-in-point, the President brought up the hip replacement received by his terminally-ill grandmother mere weeks before she passed away. During his campaign, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and then, probably due to a mild stroke, she fell and broke her hip. Her condition was analyzed by her doctors who told her she had three to nine months to live due to the cancer. They also told her that a weak heart posed risks for the invasive surgery hip replacement.

In the absence of cost-effectiveness data or guidelines to the contrary, she chose the hip replacement, which was approved by Medicare and done mostly at public expense. She passed away two weeks later, sadly just days before Obama won. It appears the stress of the operation may have shortened her life by several months.

I don't know if Obama's grandmother got approval for the hip replacement because she was related to a prominent person. That would be bad enough, but it would be even worse if we are giving hip replacements and other stressful and expensive treatments to all terminally ill grandmothers and grandfathers.


QUOTING THE PRESIDENT AGAIN


"... in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. ... So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right? I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here."

QUALITY ADUSTED LIFE YEARS

A concept called "Quality Adjusted Life Years" (QALY) is in use in the UK and, IMHO, should be adapted for use in the US. The basic idea is to estimate, before approving very expensive, public-funded medical procedures, the probability the procedure will be successful, and, if successful, the number of years the recipient is likely to live and the subjective quality of those years.

Subjective quality is a difficult measure. Fortunately for us, based on experience and practice in the UK and elsewhere, there are fairly well-established guidelines. For example, mobility is an issue in quality of life. If a person is able to walk without assistance that is better than being wheelchair-bound, and a wheel chair is better than being bedridden. Being alert and awake and mentally competent is better than lack of those qualities. Being able to take food by mouth is better than IV, etc.

In the UK, if each QALY is estimated to cost less than about $40,000, and if the recipient wants the medical procedure, it is approved for public funding. On the other hand, if the cost is more than $40,000 per QALY, or if the recipient does not want the procedure, only palliative care, consisting of pain management along with love and attention, is provided, even if this level of care will reduce the likely life span of the patient.

The QALY concept may also be utilized to compare alternative treatment options. For example, if medical treatment procedure A will cost substantially more per QALY than medical treatment procedure B, only B will be approved, even if both are under the $40,000 limit.

Examples:

1) Alice is a candidate for treatment A that is estimated to cost $150K for the treatment and care, has a probability of success of 80%, and, if successful, will provide a subjective quality of life of 60%. Based on her age and medical condition, if the procedure is successful, Alice has a life expectancy of 10 years. The calculation gives her QALY = 5 years, so each QALY will cost about $31,000, which is below the limit of $40,000. The Treatment A is therefore approved for public funding if Alice is willing to accept it.

2) Bob is a candidate for treatment B that is estimated to cost $90K for the treatment and care, has a probability of success of 50%, and, if successful, will provide a subjective quality of life of 40%. Based on his age and medical condition, if the procedure is successful, Bob has a life expectancy of 5 years. The calculation gives him QALY = 1 year, so each QALY will cost about $90,000, which is above the limit of $40,000. The Treatment A is therefore NOT approved for public funding and Bob is entitled to palliative care only.

3) Carl is a candidate for treatment C that is estimated to cost $50K, or treatment D that is estimated to cost $100K.

Treatment C has a probability of success of 90%, and, if successful, will provide a subjective quality of life of 60%. Based on his age and medical condition, if the procedure is successful, Carl has a life expectancy of 5 years. The calculation gives him QALY = 3 years, so each QALY will cost about $19,000, which is below the limit of $40,000.

Treatment D has a probability of success of 80%, and, if successful, will provide a subjective quality of life of 70%. Based on his age and medical condition, if the procedure is successful, Carl has a life expectancy of 5 years. The calculation gives him QALY = 3 years, so each QALY will cost about $36,000, which is below the limit of $40,000.

Both treatment C and D are below the limit of $40,000 per QALY, but C is substantially less expensive and, therefore, only treatment C is approved for public funding if Carl is willing to accept it.

A STORY MY FATHER TOLD ME

Once upon a time, there was a boy in China and he saw his father carrying a large basket on his shoulders. "What do you have in the basket?" he asked.

"Well," said the father, "It is your grandfather."

"What are you doing with grandpa?" asked the boy.

"Well," he replied sadly, "Your grandfather is quite old and he is so sick that we cannot take care of him anymore, so I am going to dump him in the river."

The boy thought about it awhile, and then he said: "OK, Dad, ... But remember to bring back the basket!"

Of course the point of the story is that the boy will learn from his father's actions and will, when the time comes, uses that same basket to dispatch his father.

When my mom's cancer roared up after a year of chemo and radiation, she decided to accept only palliative care. Our family travelled to San Francisco where they lived and said goodby. Hospice provided morphene and a hospital bed for their apartment. We spoke by phone every evening for about a month until she passed away.

My dad made it clear that was what he wanted when the time came.

About five years later he had a stroke and fell and was taken to the hospital where an MRI confirmed a major bleeding in his brain that was terminal. He could not speak or hear or see and was being kept alive with IV hydration and nutrition and oxygen to help his breathing. My brother and I asked the doctors to remove all artificial life support, including the IV and oxygen, and he passed away a few days later.

I have asked my children to do the same for me when the time comes. "Remember to bring back the basket!"

ACT! OR FATE?

If we Accept FATE?

• Do next to nothing to change US health care.


• Health care not fair.


• Given medical advances, End of Life costs escalate out of control.


• Neo-natal care and preventative care are under-funded.


• USA goes bankrupt (like Greece, hedonistic socialism).

If we ACT!

• Enact QALY End of Life guidelines.


• Health care is more fair.


• Given medical advances, End of Life costs are controlled.


• Neo-natal and preventative care are well-funded.


• USA avoids bankruptcy.


• Death with dignity and loving care.

CONCLUSIONS

Although I did not vote for him, and oppose much of his economic policy, I agree with President Obama's remarks on end-of-life treatment.

I wish he and his Democratic allies would be similarly honest and I wish the Republicans who are characterizing the issue as "pulling the plug on granny" would be more thoughtful and helpful and honest as well.

I do not like to hear people call these "honest broker" government medical and ethical tribunals "death panels". However, the 'honest broker" guidelines, when imposed on Medicare and other public-funded medical decisions, will, in effect, cause many of the terminally and chronically ill to be given palliative treatments that will undoubtedly shorten their lives.

Whatever you call them, I believe we need ethical end-of-life guidelines to prevent doctors and hospitals from ordering expensive treatments that are not cost-effective (and that may be done more for reasons of fear of malpractice suits and/or simple greed to increase their incomes).

I am not if favor of further nationalization of US health care. However, with Medicare the primary payer for nearly all of us over 65, we need national guidelines to prevent the program from going bankrupt. (See this and this for more details on my views of what we really need in cost-effective health care reform.)

Let us take the ethical lessons of the Runaway Trolley to heart and ACT! rather than accept the hand of FATE?

Ira Glickstein

PS: For the record, and in case the NY Times takes the page linked above out of their free access, here is the full text of the applicable section of the document from which I quoted Pressident Obama's words.

V. Post-Reform Health care
You have suggested that health care is now the No. 1 legislative priority. It seems to me this is only a small generalization — to say that the way the medical system works now is, people go to the doctor; the doctor tells them what treatments they need; they get those treatments, regardless of cost or, frankly, regardless of whether they’re effective. I wonder if you could talk to people about how going to the doctor will be different in the future; how they will experience medical care differently on the other side of health care reform.
THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I do think consumers have gotten more active in their own treatments in a way that’s very useful. And I think that should continue to be encouraged, to the extent that we can provide consumers with more information about their own well-being — that, I think, can be helpful.
I have always said, though, that we should not overstate the degree to which consumers rather than doctors are going to be driving treatment, because, I just speak from my own experience, I’m a pretty-well-educated layperson when it comes to medical care; I know how to ask good questions of my doctor. But ultimately, he’s the guy with the medical degree. So, if he tells me, You know what, you’ve got such-and-such and you need to take such-and-such, I don’t go around arguing with him or go online to see if I can find a better opinion than his.
And so, in that sense, there’s always going to be an asymmetry of information between patient and provider. And part of what I think government can do effectively is to be an honest broker in assessing and evaluating treatment options. And certainly that’s true when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, where the taxpayers are footing the bill and we have an obligation to get those costs under control.
And right now we’re footing the bill for a lot of things that don’t make people healthier.
THE PRESIDENT: That don’t make people healthier. So when Peter Orszag and I talk about the importance of using comparative-effectiveness studies (see note below) as a way of reining in costs, that’s not an attempt to micromanage the doctor-patient relationship. It is an attempt to say to patients, you know what, we’ve looked at some objective studies out here, people who know about this stuff, concluding that the blue pill, which costs half as much as the red pill, is just as effective, and you might want to go ahead and get the blue one. And if a provider is pushing the red one on you, then you should at least ask some important questions.
Won’t that be hard, because of the trust that people put in their doctors, just as you said? Won’t people say, Wait a second, my doctor is telling me to take the red pill, and the government is saving money by saying take the blue —
THE PRESIDENT: Let me put it this way: I actually think that most doctors want to do right by their patients. And if they’ve got good information, I think they will act on that good information.
Now, there are distortions in the system, everything from the drug salesmen and junkets to how reimbursements occur. Some of those things government has control over; some of those things are just more embedded in our medical culture. But the doctors I know — both ones who treat me as well as friends of mine — I think take their job very seriously and are thinking in terms of what’s best for the patient. They operate within particular incentive structures, like anybody else, and particular habits, like anybody else.
And so if it turns out that doctors in Florida are spending 25 percent more on treating their patients as doctors in Minnesota, and the doctors in Minnesota are getting outcomes that are just as good — then us going down to Florida and pointing out that this is how folks in Minnesota are doing it and they seem to be getting pretty good outcomes, and are there particular reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing? — I think that conversation will ultimately yield some significant savings and some significant benefits.
Now, I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care — it’s a related one — is what you do around things like end-of-life care —
Yes, where it’s $20,000 for an extra week of life.
THE PRESIDENT: Exactly. And I just recently went through this. I mean, I’ve told this story, maybe not publicly, but when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall.
So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.
And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart.
I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life — that would be pretty upsetting.
And it’s going to be hard for people who don’t have the option of paying for it.
THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?
I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.
So how do you — how do we deal with it?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

Note: Comparative-effective studies — which are now done by academic researchers, but not systematically across the medical system — review data to determine which widely used treatments do not improve outcomes and which effective treatments are not used often enough.

My Prediction Came True - Big Market Recovery in 2009

[Double-click graphic for larger view]

Back in March 2009, I did a posting titled Prediction: Big Market Recovery This Year! That included the above graphic.

At the time of my prediction, the Dow was down at around 7,000. In the graphic, I showed what I thought the "true" value was (the green dots). and I wrote:

"The good news is that the market will probably recover nearly as fast as it dropped. I predict we will see it around 9,000 or more by year end and over 10,000 in a few years."

Well, the Market overachieved. It ended 2009 at 10,428.

No OIL in Afghanistan

OIL and the Iraq War

Back in 2007, I posted Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL), agreeing with Alan Greenspan that "The Iraq war is largely about oil ..."
The original name of the operation, was "Operation Iraqi Liberation". That spells out the acronym "OIL".

In my 2007 posting, I linked to the White House website where, on March 24, 2003, Ari Fleisher, President George W. Bush's Press Secretary, is quoted as saying: "The President this morning has spoken with three foreign leaders. He began with Prime Minister Blair, where the two discussed the ongoing aspects of Operation Iraqi liberation." [Emphasis added.]

The name was soon changed to "Operation Iraqi Freedom" - "OIF" and statements were made that Iraq was not about "blood for oil". The 2003 White House posting was available at the time of my 2007 Blog item, but it has since been taken down.

Of course, OIL was not the only reason for the Iraq War. It was certainly important to depose a terrible and dangerous dictator who had used chemical weapons in the past against his own people and who we thought had or intended to get a nuclear weapons program. So, liberation of Iraq and setting up something like democracy were important reasons for the war.

My 2007 Blog posting was written before the surge where Gen. Petraeus used a healthy helping of additional US troops and established the conditions that have allowed the current partial withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. I believe history will conclude our actions in Iraq were justified to assure a level of stability in a country that has a large percentage of the world's oil. The Iraq War was necessary for the stability and progress of the world's economy and for something like peace in a historically turbulent region.

Afghanistan Has No OIL

"Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan" (OEF-A) is the official name for our military action in Afghanistan. (The original name was "Operation Infinite Justice" which offended those who believe the source of "infinite justice" is God.)

According to Wikipedia, "The initial military objectives of OEF-A, as articulated by Former President George W. Bush in his Sept. 20th [2001] Address to a Joint Session of Congress and his Oct. 7th [2001] address to the country, included the destruction of terrorist training camps and infrastructure within Afghanistan, the capture of al Queda leaders, and the cessation of terrorist activities in Afghanistan." Multi-national military action began in 2002, just a year after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the US mainland.

The Bush administration has been criticized for emphasizing military action in Iraq, which had little or nothing to do with 9/11, rather than in Afghanistan where the Taliban allowed Al Queda to train the terrorists responsible for 9/11. The Obama administration is now being asked by the commander, Gen. McChrystal, to deploy tens of thousands of additional troops there and repeat an Afghan version of Gen. Petraeus's Iraq surge. As in Iraq, the generals say we need US "boots on the ground" to gain and hold territory.

After much reading and consideration, I have come to the conclusion the US should not greatly increase troop strength now. We should revert to the previous Bush administration policy of a "light footprint" that defends key population centers and uses mainly airborne strikes to prevent the Taliban and whatever remnants of Al Queda remain in Afghanistan from making too much progress. Given the terrain, population and history of Afghanistan, there is nothing to be gained by adding more US blood to that already left by the British in the 1800's and the Russians more recently.

I think history will eventually recognize that the Bush strategy of a relatively low-level war in Afghanistan, where our allies took a large percentage of the responsibility, was correct. Those of you who have played chess know it is sometimes safer to hold back and exercise force from a distance, using your Rooks, Bishops and the Queen on clear diagonals and columns, rather than commit your pawns and Knights to a "boots on the ground" attack.

Iraq, a strategic source of oil, required both boots on the ground and airpower. Afghanistan, especially now that we have unmanned air vehicles capable of pinpoint attacks, should be addressed mostly with remote airpower. I believe VP Biden has been advocating a position similar to mine and that Obama will eventually accept that policy.

Lots of OIL in IRAN

I hope it does not come down to it, but, if Iran continues to build its nuclear weapons program, the US and our allies will have to take military action of some sort. That country has a large percentage of the world's supply of oil and it is therefore important to keep it stable and peaceful.

But, Iran is not Iraq. There is a considerable level of well-organized internal opposition to the current leadership and the Ayatollahs are not crazy. Perhaps we can persuade the Iranians to take a more reasonable approach. With the cooperation of the Russians and French, Iran can have a peaceful nuclear power program and we can have guarantees it is not directed at nuclear weapons.

Ira Glickstein