SOME MORE PREDICTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR

As long as everyone is washing their anxieties away with old 2008, and desperately looking for more hope, and actually with more anxiousness than ever at 2009, I might as well add my two cents into the penny jar.

After the elections I made a list of predictions about what my be the results of the Obama election and I stick by them. At the bottom of this article I will post them again and draw the correlation of how fast some of them have come in fruition and Obama hasn't even stepped into the White House yet officially as President.

Of course this is understandable because many despots in world leadership need not wait for the newly elected President to take office if they are watching closely during what he says and does during our national elections.

The first thing I would like to do away with much along the lines of the ever so famous "banned words" and "banned phrases" of this past year is add my own pet peeve to the list, and that is...." The Office of the President Elect" and "Audacity"

If the audacity of soon to be President Obama is anything like his audacity of the election campaign we are in for one hell of a ride.

First off there is no official "Office of the President Elect". I am not really sure who came up with all of this crap but I suspect it was Axelrod. Not in my lifetime have I personally nor has this country to my knowledge personally experienced such an anxious rush to supersede a sitting President as the impression that has been left by the Obama camp in its rush to appear presidential.

Thankfully whether Obama makes just four years or is successful at anything significant while conduction his affairs as President and gets another four year reprieve I don't think we will be seeing or hearing any news coming from the "Office of President Elect" after his tenure. If we do I would be highly surprised.

So prediction number one for the New Year...;
The Office of the President Elect will become extinct.

My second prediction is not so bright, but I believe that whether "O" lasts just four years or eight peace in the middle east between Israel and its neighbors, especially the Palestinian will not be resolved.
In my earlier prediction I also said that Israel would feel like the United States had abandoned it and I stand by that. If what I have seen from Mr. Obama's character is anything like his real life persona he is going to make some very poor choices about how to resolve the middle east crisis and Israel will be left for much time out in the cold as an Allie.

My Third prediction is that heterophobia will become rampant in the gay community when President "O" takes on an emphasised moderation of his stance on gay rights
by failing to appoint no even one openly gay person to his immediate staff or in any significant position of his cabinet, or executive appointments.

My Fourth prediction is that withing six months the honeymoon atmosphere between Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama will be all but over. Even Obama's narcissism will overwhelm the self righteousness and pomp of "Live in Hell forever Harry", and "Oh Nancy Jealousy".

My Fifth prediction is that in less than six months, Obama not Biden will make such a public blunder that even the adoring news media and most of all the late night t.v. clan will have a good joke and great laugh at his expense and his kingdom will be tarnished for only one of many times to come.

My sixth prediction is that in the first year of his administration one oh his key staff members will be exposed and within 3 months after that that person will be forced to resign, and a republican will be appointed in his place.

And last but by no means the least but au contre' perhaps the most important Mr. Obama's first two years will be riddled with political blunders and missteps of good foreign policy and the rest of the world will clearly see what a mistake he has become. All of the lofty goals and promises that he had promised during his audacious campaign will come to light as nothing more than hot air. But most of all his naivety on how to handle his military decisions and he diplomacy will come to light leaving him famished but not humbled. Obama's domestic missteps and infighting within his own party will clear the way for a power struggle between himself his close advisers and who else but the invincible Clintons. If Hillary makes four years as Obama's Secretary of State, I will be highly surprised.

Israel's operation in Gaza is entering its problematic phase

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent


Operation Cast Lead is entering the problematic phase of any war: The
first, surprise strike is over, the operational successes are less
impressive, and the enemy is beginning to rally. Israel would want to
continue hurting Hamas, but the goals readied before the operation are
running out and the magical aerial solutions that do not involve loss of
soldiers are coming to an end.

This is the stage when the government must decide whether to send ground
troops into the Gaza Strip and begin face-to-face combat with Hamas or make do with threats, seek a cease-fire that will bear the imprint of the
bombardments of the first days and announce that the goal had been attained and threaten that if rocket-fire from Gaza continues the next strike will be more painful.

Monday the first signs of controversy surfaced in Israel regarding the
continuation of the operation and its character. The defense establishment at first spoke enthusiastically about a three- and even four-week operation, and about preparations for a ground assault. The cabinet decision allows for such an escalation, up to retaking the Gaza Strip, but the Foreign Ministry says the international community will stop Israel long before that.

Meanwhile, the diplomatic arena is quiet. Israel discounts today's meeting of European Union foreign ministers and the urgent calls from the United Nations secretary general and the foreign ministers of Britain and France for an immediate cease-fire. No senior envoy is on the way to Israel to stop the fighting. The Bush White House is very pleased with the blow struck against Hamas.

However, Jerusalem was not pleased with the statement by the U.N. Security Council that called on both sides to cease hostilities and protested to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the wording described Israel and Hamas as equals. But Rice made clear that this is the way it would go.

Jerusalem believes that the international community will do no more than
release empty statements to the media, but would intervene to stop the
fighting if there were a major incident (such as the Kfar Qana bombing that stopped Operation Grapes of Wrath in Lebanon in 1996) resulting in numerous civilian casualties in Gaza or if domestic pressure in Egypt and Jordan reached intolerable levels.

Israel cannot expect the world to "save it from itself," and it should look for ways to end the conflict quickly. The danger lurking here is a feeling of success that would drag on the action and increase the chances of unpleasant entanglements.

It was said in the Knesset Monday that the political winner of the
fighting in Gaza was clearly Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Meanwhile, he is growing stronger at the expense of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, but senior Likud figures said that if this trend continued Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu would have to end his cease-fire with Barak and begin seeing him as a threat.

A better showing in the polls is exactly Barak's problem: He will have to
have very strong nerves to know when the right time is to stop the
operation and not to try to achieve one more small gain. After having been taunted for a long time that he has no courage, Barak proved he was not afraid to pit the IDF against Hamas. Now he has to be careful of those who will say he lacks character because he called for a cease-fire.

Barak Monday rejected a proposal from French Foreign Minsiter Bernard
Kouchner for a 48-hour lull to send humanitarian aid into Gaza. Some
officials in Israel thought this was a chance to call a halt to the
operation, with rain in any case limiting the IDF's ability to maneuver.
Barak told Kouchner not to worry, humanitarian aid was arriving into Gaza
all the time.

It can be assumed that the longer the fighting continues, the more trouble Israel's quarrelling leadership will have staying unified. In the end, as in every war, the defense establishment will argue that it was stopped a moment before it destroyed the enemy while the diplomats will say the fighting went on too long, until Israel lost international support.

AN INSITE INTO THE FUTURE OF UNIVERSAL COVERAGE PART 1

How a Public Health Plan Will Erode Private Care
by Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D.
Backgrounder #2224

So, if you have insurance you like, you keep that insurance. If you have a doctor you like, you keep that doctor. The only thing that changes for you is that your costs will go down.

--Senator Barack Obama, presidential campaign speech, Asheville, North Carolina, October 5, 2008

Details kill. If we get too far into the weeds, if we produce a 1,500- or 1,600- page bill, we're going to get hung up on all the details and we're never going to get to the principles.

--Senator Tom Daschle, Secretary of Health and Human Services Designate, Colorado Health Care Summit, Denver, December 5, 2008

When it comes to the deadly details, millions of Americans could be in for an unpleasant surprise. During the election campaign, President-elect Barack Obama promised--repeatedly--that Americans who already had health insurance would not face any changes in their coverage and that their costs would go down, saving the typical family $2,500 annually in premiums.[1]

It turns out, however, that these promises cannot be fulfilled. Under the health reform plan that the President-elect has outlined, including variations of his basic approach that have been refined by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) and former Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD), President-elect Obama's pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services, millions of Americans will indeed lose their existing coverage, and the promised premium savings are unlikely to materialize.

The reason is that Obama has proposed (1) the creation of a new national health plan, run by the federal government and financed by the taxpayers; (2) an employer mandate enforced by a payroll tax; and 3) a congressionally created national health insurance exchange in which the public health plan, subsidized by taxpayers and armed with special advantages, would compete unfairly with private health insurance.[2] The result would be a massive crowd-out of private health insurance coverage, especially employer-based coverage.

Ugly Scenarios. There are differences, of course, among the plans advanced by these three gentlemen. For example, Senators Baucus and Daschle, unlike Obama, favor the imposition of an individual mandate on adult Americans to buy health insurance. But such a mandate is not nearly as consequential as a whole new government health plan. As The Wall Street Journal has noted:

The irony is that the public option--not the mandate--is far and away the most radical part of the plan. Green eyeshade objections are obviously out of favor in modern Washington, but the reality is that the Baucus-Obama plan would be extraordinarily expensive as it slowly but relentlessly grew the government's share of health spending.[3]

Most Americans under the age of 65 get private health insurance through employment, and the overwhelming majority of them are satisfied with it.[4] The vast majority of American voters oppose any kind of government-controlled health plan if it means that they have to change their own health insurance coverage.[5] Only a small minority of Americans with insurance--15 percent--would be willing to switch to some form of government health insurance.[6] But the combination of a public health plan and a new tax or mandated coverage by the employer would prove disastrous for millions of individuals and families enrolled in employer-based coverage. In an employer-based health insurance system, of course, employers, not employees, decide whether to continue or terminate coverage.

Big Impact. There are already tens of billions of dollars in cost-shifting from existing public health programs, Medicare, and Medicaid to individuals and families enrolled in private health insurance. The introduction of a new public plan, assuming payment levels below market rates, would aggravate and increase these costs. Once again, details are crucial.

But beyond greater cost-shifting to private insurance is the very real loss of private health insurance coverage itself. In an October 2008 analysis, the Lewin Group, a nationally prominent econometrics firm based in Virginia, estimated that the Obama plan would indeed significantly reduce the number of the uninsured, with 26.6 million additional Americans getting coverage by 2010. Lewin also estimated that the Obama plan would dramatically alter the way in which many Americans would be covered: 21.6 million Americans would lose their private coverage, but an estimated 48.3 million would end up in public coverage through the new government health plan, as well as through the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and Medicaid, which is a welfare program.[7] In the course of this new configuration of American health insurance coverage, Lewin estimated, 18.6 million employees would find themselves in the new government plan as employers switched to it from private health insurance.[8]

More recently, the Lewin Group elaborated on the impact of a new government health plan offered in competition with private health plans and outlined the dramatic consequences, both for private coverage and for revenues earned by doctors and hospitals.[9] Under any scenario, Lewin estimated a crowd-out, or displacement of private health insurance, with the introduction of a new public plan. Key factors determining the impact would be the size of the eligible pool of employees and their dependents; the payment levels adopted by the new government plan; and whether those levels would be private payment levels, Medicare payment levels, or at midpoint between private payment and Medicare payment.

In calculating the alternative scenarios, the Lewin Group provided a range of potential impacts:

Lost Private Coverage. With eligibility limited to employees in small firms and to individuals and the self-employed, at midpoint payment levels, an estimated 31.5 million persons would be enrolled in the government health plan, and an estimated 21.5 million would be switched out of private coverage. If the payment levels in the public plan were the same as Medicare, enrollment in the government plan would jump to 42.7 million, and a total of 31.8 million would be transitioned out of private coverage.

If all employees were eligible for enrollment in the government plan, at Medicare payment levels, the shifts would be massive: 130.5 million Americans would be enrolled in the government plan, and 118 \.5 million would lose or be switched out of private health coverage. While some people might choose to join the public plan, many would have little or no choice in the matter, since their employers would drop their coverage.

Lost Hospital Revenues. If eligibility for enrollment in a public plan was opened to all employees and payments were at a level midpoint between private and Medicare payment, hospitals would find themselves with a net reduction in payment of $7.3 billion in 2009. If all employees were eligible at Medicare payment levels, hospitals would see a net reduction in payment of $36.5 billion in 2009.

Lost Physician Revenues. Doctors already struggle with Medicare and Medicaid payment levels, and medical practice would be further constrained by the introduction of a new government health plan. If all employees were eligible for enrollment in such a plan, and if such a plan paid at Medicare payments levels, doctors would see a net reduction in their paymentof $36.4 billion in 2009.

Details Matter. The President-elect's rationale for the provision of a new government plan is that it would give those Americans not enrolled in employment-based health insurance coverage, or those with insecure coverage, the opportunity to obtain stable, affordable health insurance with a guaranteed set of government-standardized benefits. But while it might look like a prescription for consumer choice and competition, the reality is very different.

Consider the components: a powerful regulatory body that runs a proposed National Health Exchange, enforcing a single set of rules; a rigged competition between private health plans and a government health plan that enjoys special advantages and potentially unlimited taxpayer subsidies; and another powerful federal agency--a board, council or institute--determining what medical services and benefits would be covered and reimbursed in Americans' health insurance. In the new public plan, as is the case for Medicare and Medicaid, costs would doubtless be controlled by cutting payments for medical goods and services, thus reducing their availability.

Given the structure, function, and dynamics of such a combination of proposals, the result would surely be a rapid evolution toward either a single-payer system of national health insurance or, at the very least, a highly regulated and painfully sluggish, centrally controlled system of health care in which private health plans and private medical practice are private in name only. Meanwhile, millions of Americans would lose their employer-based health insurance, and the artificially swollen and heavily subsidized government health plan would remain as the benchmark for "private" decisions concerning financing, benefits, and standards within the new National Health Exchange.

WHAT THE NEW PLAN WOULD LOOK LIKE
continued tomorrow 12.30.08

AN INSITE INTO THE FUTURE OF UNIVERSAL COVERAGE

How a Public Health Plan Will Erode Private Care
by Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D.
Backgrounder #2224

So, if you have insurance you like, you keep that insurance. If you have a doctor you like, you keep that doctor. The only thing that changes for you is that your costs will go down.

--Senator Barack Obama, presidential campaign speech, Asheville, North Carolina, October 5, 2008

Details kill. If we get too far into the weeds, if we produce a 1,500- or 1,600- page bill, we're going to get hung up on all the details and we're never going to get to the principles.

--Senator Tom Daschle, Secretary of Health and Human Services Designate, Colorado Health Care Summit, Denver, December 5, 2008

When it comes to the deadly details, millions of Americans could be in for an unpleasant surprise. During the election campaign, President-elect Barack Obama promised--repeatedly--that Americans who already had health insurance would not face any changes in their coverage and that their costs would go down, saving the typical family $2,500 annually in premiums.[1]

It turns out, however, that these promises cannot be fulfilled. Under the health reform plan that the President-elect has outlined, including variations of his basic approach that have been refined by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) and former Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD), President-elect Obama's pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services, millions of Americans will indeed lose their existing coverage, and the promised premium savings are unlikely to materialize.

The reason is that Obama has proposed (1) the creation of a new national health plan, run by the federal government and financed by the taxpayers; (2) an employer mandate enforced by a payroll tax; and 3) a congressionally created national health insurance exchange in which the public health plan, subsidized by taxpayers and armed with special advantages, would compete unfairly with private health insurance.[2] The result would be a massive crowd-out of private health insurance coverage, especially employer-based coverage.

Ugly Scenarios. There are differences, of course, among the plans advanced by these three gentlemen. For example, Senators Baucus and Daschle, unlike Obama, favor the imposition of an individual mandate on adult Americans to buy health insurance. But such a mandate is not nearly as consequential as a whole new government health plan. As The Wall Street Journal has noted:

The irony is that the public option--not the mandate--is far and away the most radical part of the plan. Green eyeshade objections are obviously out of favor in modern Washington, but the reality is that the Baucus-Obama plan would be extraordinarily expensive as it slowly but relentlessly grew the government's share of health spending.[3]

Most Americans under the age of 65 get private health insurance through employment, and the overwhelming majority of them are satisfied with it.[4] The vast majority of American voters oppose any kind of government-controlled health plan if it means that they have to change their own health insurance coverage.[5] Only a small minority of Americans with insurance--15 percent--would be willing to switch to some form of government health insurance.[6] But the combination of a public health plan and a new tax or mandated coverage by the employer would prove disastrous for millions of individuals and families enrolled in employer-based coverage. In an employer-based health insurance system, of course, employers, not employees, decide whether to continue or terminate coverage.

Big Impact. There are already tens of billions of dollars in cost-shifting from existing public health programs, Medicare, and Medicaid to individuals and families enrolled in private health insurance. The introduction of a new public plan, assuming payment levels below market rates, would aggravate and increase these costs. Once again, details are crucial.

But beyond greater cost-shifting to private insurance is the very real loss of private health insurance coverage itself. In an October 2008 analysis, the Lewin Group, a nationally prominent econometrics firm based in Virginia, estimated that the Obama plan would indeed significantly reduce the number of the uninsured, with 26.6 million additional Americans getting coverage by 2010. Lewin also estimated that the Obama plan would dramatically alter the way in which many Americans would be covered: 21.6 million Americans would lose their private coverage, but an estimated 48.3 million would end up in public coverage through the new government health plan, as well as through the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and Medicaid, which is a welfare program.[7] In the course of this new configuration of American health insurance coverage, Lewin estimated, 18.6 million employees would find themselves in the new government plan as employers switched to it from private health insurance.[8]

More recently, the Lewin Group elaborated on the impact of a new government health plan offered in competition with private health plans and outlined the dramatic consequences, both for private coverage and for revenues earned by doctors and hospitals.[9] Under any scenario, Lewin estimated a crowd-out, or displacement of private health insurance, with the introduction of a new public plan. Key factors determining the impact would be the size of the eligible pool of employees and their dependents; the payment levels adopted by the new government plan; and whether those levels would be private payment levels, Medicare payment levels, or at midpoint between private payment and Medicare payment.

In calculating the alternative scenarios, the Lewin Group provided a range of potential impacts:

Lost Private Coverage. With eligibility limited to employees in small firms and to individuals and the self-employed, at midpoint payment levels, an estimated 31.5 million persons would be enrolled in the government health plan, and an estimated 21.5 million would be switched out of private coverage. If the payment levels in the public plan were the same as Medicare, enrollment in the government plan would jump to 42.7 million, and a total of 31.8 million would be transitioned out of private coverage.

If all employees were eligible for enrollment in the government plan, at Medicare payment levels, the shifts would be massive: 130.5 million Americans would be enrolled in the government plan, and 118 \.5 million would lose or be switched out of private health coverage. While some people might choose to join the public plan, many would have little or no choice in the matter, since their employers would drop their coverage.

Lost Hospital Revenues. If eligibility for enrollment in a public plan was opened to all employees and payments were at a level midpoint between private and Medicare payment, hospitals would find themselves with a net reduction in payment of $7.3 billion in 2009. If all employees were eligible at Medicare payment levels, hospitals would see a net reduction in payment of $36.5 billion in 2009.

Lost Physician Revenues. Doctors already struggle with Medicare and Medicaid payment levels, and medical practice would be further constrained by the introduction of a new government health plan. If all employees were eligible for enrollment in such a plan, and if such a plan paid at Medicare payments levels, doctors would see a net reduction in their paymentof $36.4 billion in 2009.

Details Matter. The President-elect's rationale for the provision of a new government plan is that it would give those Americans not enrolled in employment-based health insurance coverage, or those with insecure coverage, the opportunity to obtain stable, affordable health insurance with a guaranteed set of government-standardized benefits. But while it might look like a prescription for consumer choice and competition, the reality is very different.

Consider the components: a powerful regulatory body that runs a proposed National Health Exchange, enforcing a single set of rules; a rigged competition between private health plans and a government health plan that enjoys special advantages and potentially unlimited taxpayer subsidies; and another powerful federal agency--a board, council or institute--determining what medical services and benefits would be covered and reimbursed in Americans' health insurance. In the new public plan, as is the case for Medicare and Medicaid, costs would doubtless be controlled by cutting payments for medical goods and services, thus reducing their availability.

Given the structure, function, and dynamics of such a combination of proposals, the result would surely be a rapid evolution toward either a single-payer system of national health insurance or, at the very least, a highly regulated and painfully sluggish, centrally controlled system of health care in which private health plans and private medical practice are private in name only. Meanwhile, millions of Americans would lose their employer-based health insurance, and the artificially swollen and heavily subsidized government health plan would remain as the benchmark for "private" decisions concerning financing, benefits, and standards within the new National Health Exchange.

WHAT THE NEW PLAN WOULD LOOK LIKE
continued tomorrow 12.30.08

If in fact I have any readers which to date hasn't been validated, I take this moment to wish you all a very Merry Holiday Season.

If my readers have been following the election throw and blows you have most probably noticed that since election day I have been loading up my blog with other peoples work. This is mainly because I am still suffering the effects of "manic depressive post election sydrome". This is brought about by the realization that the surrounding populous truely is stupid. This election proved it once again.

Now please don't think that I am espousing any greater intelligence than my fellow common man, because I sincerely am not. Even without the proper higher education of logical reasoning, and thanks to an upbringing by a father of extreme logical intutition, I have been blessed the ability to decifer the "shades of gray" of human manipulation.

Although I am an agnostic, and one of my first logical challenges was the validity of organized religion, its truths its lies, and its reasons, I still use the word "blessed". Not out of fear of reprisal nor eternity in man's biblical hell but out of "blessed reason" I leave the door open to grow more wise until the day I die.

Anyway I am now apologizing for falling off the deep end of personal thought and leaning on my fellow writers capabilities to express my opinions. I promise that come the new year I will have come to my strenghts and convictions once again and begin to share more of my own personal "not so silent thoughts" with my readers. Of course when I find other articles written by fellow writers with so much more profoundity than me I will continuer to them pass them on.

But not to stray from the topic of the day. Again;

I wish to relay to you all "A HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON AND HERE'S LOOKING TOWARDS A BETTER AND BRIGHTER NEW YEAR"

LIBERAL LIES, LOTS OF THEM

Liberal ideology, and the average liberal's self-image, is founded on -- let's be polite about it -- myth and misinformation.

Throughout the 20th century, liberals have excused and explained their latest utopian "solutions" to manufactured "problems" using twisted history.

As it turns out:
DDT isn't dangerous, Alger Hiss was a spy, the Rosenbergs were guilty, the Samoans weren't promiscuous, one-our-of-four women aren't rape victims, AIDS isn't a threat to "everyone"...

This list is long, and I'll be writing more about this fake alternative history at my Examiner.com site in the New Year.

For now, let's look at the Biggest Liberal Lies of 2008.

Where to begin?

* They've had to rename "global warming" "climate change" to cover up the fact that "global warming" has turned out to be the Loch Ness Monster of weather.

* No one yelled "Kill him" (meaning Obama) at a Sarah Palin rally. (And those Palin rallies were much bigger than reported in the MSM)

* McCain knows exactly where Spain is.

* That "Iraqi" journalist who threw two shoes at Bush is actually a pro-Saddam Egyptian.

I need your help putting together this list.

Add your "favorite" liberal lies in the comments and make sure you mention your source, if possible: Snopes, Newsbusters, the author of a debunking book or article. Thanks!

(Kathy Shaidle blogs at FiveFeetOfFury, now entering its ninth year. Her new book The Tyranny of Nice, exposing Canada's corrupt "Human Rights" Commissions, features an introducution by Mark Steyn.)

Appellate court strikes down OK residency law

December 19, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
Send to a Friend | Share on Facebook | printer-friendly Paul Jacob had plenty of reason to celebrate a unanimous appellate court ruling yesterday that struck down an Oklahoma residency requirement for participation in political campaigns. The 3-0 decision declaring such laws unconstitutional knocks out the struts of a peculiar prosecution of Jacob and two others who face long prison sentences for the crime of assisting those collecting signatures for a taxpayer bill of rights referendum. Eric Dondero has Jacob’s reaction to the ruling:
Just got word that the federal 10th Circuit struck down Oklahoma’s residency law 3-0! That’s the third federal circuit court this year to UNANIMOUSLY overturn residency laws as unconstitutional.
This is very good news. It puts another nail in the coffin of these residency bans that thwart the people’s right to petition, and it “should” mean that the outrageous prosecution of the Oklahoma-3 will come to an end.
As I’ve always contended, whether the residency law is struck down or not, we will be acquitted. We did not willfully violate any law in the course of the 2005 Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights petition drive. However, the fact that this statute has now been invalidated should stop our persecution in its tracks.
Jacob notes that the case will likely get appealed to the Supreme Court, but that he expects to prevail there as well. Dondero himself participated in a lawsuit to get the residency requirement thrown out.
For those unfamiliar with the case, Jacob explained it last year:
Unlike most initiative states, Oklahoma has a residency requirement allowing only Oklahoma residents to circulate a petition. But when the petition company checked with state officials to determine what constituted a resident, those officials said that a person could move to Oklahoma and immediately declare residency — and begin petitioning.
Just to be safe, since sometimes simple law can be made amazingly complicated, I asked for any relevant legal precedent. The ruling in a recent challenge to an Oklahoma petition to ban cock-fighting seemed clear: residency was determined by an individual’s intention to be a resident.
A number of petitioners moved to Oklahoma, declared residency, and proceeded to gather signatures on the various petitions. Ultimately, both the spending cap and the property rights measure garnered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
Then, the various forces of big government that had worked so hard to block the vote, joined by a who’s who of corporate CEOs and the heads of energy companies and banks (can you say “daddy welfare”?), challenged the petition. And the Oklahoma Supreme Court came to their aid, providing a much different standard for residency than in the past. The judges now equated residency with a “permanent home.”
How permanent was “permanent”? One petition circulator, who moved to Oklahoma in September of 2005 and was still living there in July of the following year, was ruled not to be a resident.
Jacob’s case got even stranger than this. Jacob and the other two defendants didn’t circulate the petitions themselves; they only consulted with the initiative’s leadership on petition circulation. The state Attorney General charged them with a single count of conspiracy to break the residency-requirement law, but never charged anyone with actually breaking that law. The AG never filed charges against any signature gatherer. In other words, the state of Oklahoma wants to prosecute Jacob for conspiring to commit supposed crimes for which they cannot and/or will not prosecute the actual alleged criminals. It’s absurd.
Hopefully, this puts an end to the strange jeremiad of the state AG against the Oklahoma 3. If it doesn’t, it will clearly demonstrate the political motives of the Democratic AG behind his pursuit of felony charges against tax activists for simply giving advice to people wanting to

Anti Kidnap Expert Kidnapped In Mexico

A US anti-kidnapping expert was kidnapped in Mexico this week.
Sign on San Diego and Free Republic reported:

MEXICO CITY — A U.S. anti-kidnapping expert was abducted by gunmen in northern Mexico last week, a sign of just how bold this nation's kidnapping gangs have become.

U.S. security consultant Felix Batista – who claims to have helped resolve nearly 100 kidnap and ransom cases – was in Saltillo in Coahuila state to offer advice on how to confront abductions for ransom when he himself was seized, local authorities said.

Unknown assailants grabbed him on Dec. 10, said Charlie LeBlanc, the president of the Houston, Texas-based security firm ASI Global LLC., where Batista is a consultant.

"We have notified the FBI and Mexican authorities, and they are working on the case," LeBlanc said Monday. "What we are doing is we're offering our support to the family and hoping for the best."
Obviously, he is not quite the expert he thought he was.Perhaps he would be better at Wall Street Consulting and Investment.

Mr. Batista, who was frequently quoted in media stories about kidnapping, ignored the State Department's Mexico travel alert. In Mexico organized-crime killings soared to 5,376 in 2008, more than double the 2,477 deaths in Mexico in 2007.
Somebody probably should have told Felix that Mexico is more dangerous than Iraq.
Our best wishes and Felice Navidad! These negotiations are such a slow process.

Address THIS as an immediate problem, President Elect

We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. It would be a game-changer in the region. Not only would it threaten Israel, our strongest ally in the region and one of our strongest allies in the world, but it would also create a possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. And so it's unacceptable. And I will do everything that's required to prevent it. And we will never take military options off the table.

--Barack Obama, Second Presidential Debate[1]

President-elect Obama, you are right that the United States cannot allow Iran to attain a nuclear weapon. Your statement during the second presidential debate indicates that you appreciate the unacceptable dangers posed by a nuclear-capable Iran. But statements like the following indicate a lack of understanding about the past record of failed attempts to negotiate with Iran:

Question: [W]ould you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?...

Obama: I would.[2]

Your Administration must learn from the experience of previous Administrations and European governments that have sought negotiations with Iran. The diplomatic path is not promising. Iran has strongly resisted international efforts to pressure it to abide by its legal commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and halt its suspect

nuclear activities. Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defiantly proclaimed last year that "Iran has obtained the technology to produce nuclear fuel, and Iran's move is like a train...which has no brake and no reverse gear."[3]

The diplomatic route would be more promising if the regime in Tehran was motivated primarily by a desire to advance Iran's national interests and promote the welfare of its people, but Iran's revolutionary Islamist regime is more interested in maintaining a brutal grip on power and spreading Islamist revolution. Ahmadinejad rose through the ranks of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was created after Iran's 1979 revolution to defend and promote Ayatollah Khomeini's radical vision of revolutionary Shia Islam, and is committed to returning to the ideological purity of the revolution's early years.

But we must be careful not to personalize the problem. Iran's nuclear program began under President Rafsanjani and flourished under President Khatami. Both were considered "moderates," extolled by some observers as leaders with whom the West could do business, but both also practiced diplomacy by taqiyyah, which is a religiously sanctioned form of dissimulation or duplicity.

If you sat down with President Ahmadinejad without preconditions, as you said you would, you would hand him an opportunity to practice his own taqiyyah, strut on the world stage, lecture you about the supposed superiority of Iran's Islamic system, and assert Iran's claim to leadership of the Muslim world. Such a meeting would dishearten Iran's repressed opposition, strengthen Ahmadinejad's hard-liners at the expense of reformist groups, give Ahmadinejad a boost in popularity that could greatly improve his chances of being re-elected if the meeting occurred before Iran's June elections, and allow him to go through the motions of a diplomatic dialogue to defuse international pressure while Iran continues its nuclear efforts.

Your nominee as Secretary of State, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), rejected meeting with Ahmadinejad without preconditions, saying during the July 2007 YouTube debate that "I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes." The next day, she blasted your willingness to sit down with Iran's president: "I thought that was irresponsible and frankly naïve."[4] You should take the advice of your nominee and rethink your position on meeting with Iran's leader.

The U.S. should mobilize an international coali­tion to raise the diplomatic, economic, domestic political, and potential military costs to Tehran of continuing to flout its obligations under its nuclear safeguards agreements. This coalition should seek to isolate the regime, weaken it through targeted economic sanc­tions, explain to the Iranian people why their gov­ernment's nuclear policies will impose economic costs and military risks on them, contain and deter Iran's mil­itary power, and encourage democratic change.

To drive home your point that an Iranian nuclear weapon is "unacceptable," you should craft an Iran policy that includes the following important elements:

Recognize that the U.N. is a diplomatic dead end that will continue to do too little, too late to stop Iran's drive for nuclear weapons. The United States has sought to coax another sanctions resolution out of the U.N. Security Council, which has passed three rounds of limited sanctions on Iran, but past U.S. and European efforts to ratchet up sanctions against Iran have been frustrated by Russia and China. Both countries have lucrative trade relationships with and strategic ties to Tehran, and both have used their veto power as members of the Security Council to delay and dilute efforts to impose sanctions.

If strong, concerted international action had been taken five years ago, shortly after Iran's concealment of its uranium enrichment activities was revealed, the rising economic and international costs of its nuclear defiance might have led Tehran to reconsider its drive for nuclear weapons, but such action is less likely now than ever before. Given Moscow's increasingly confrontational behavior and threats to retaliate for international criticism of its invasion of Georgia, the Security Council is sure to remain ineffective in addressing the Iranian nuclear issue because of the threat of a Russian veto. Moreover, Russia is upgrading its ties with Iran. On September 18, Russia announced plans to sell more military equipment to Iran, including new anti-aircraft missiles that Iran could deploy to protect its illicit nuclear weapons program.


Recognize that attempts to negotiate a diplomatic deal with Iran represent the triumph of wishful thinking over past experience. Under Ahmadinejad's predecessors, Iran concealed and lied about its nuclear program for two decades before admitting that it had built a secret uranium enrichment plant at Natanz in 2003. When confronted, Tehran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment program, undoubtedly out of fear of a U.S.-led intervention after America took military action to remove regimes in neighboring states led by Saddam Hussein and the Taliban.

Iran engaged in a half-hearted charade of negotiations with Britain, France, and Germany--the EU-3--in which it temporarily froze its uranium enrichment efforts, only to resume such dangerous activities after Ahmadinejad was installed in power in 2005 and the perceived threat of a possible U.S. military strike diminished. Tehran perceived that the international situation had shifted in its favor. The U.S. faced deteriorating security conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, in part because of Iranian meddling; oil prices surged, insulating Iran from the threat of sanctions; and Iran cultivated Russia and China to fend off effective sanctions at the U.N. Security Council.

Despite this, there are continuing calls for further attempts to reach a "grand bargain" in which Iran would pledge to abandon its nuclear efforts and support for terrorism in exchange for various economic carrots and security guarantees. However, the prospects for such a grand bargain are grossly overstated and ignore the past history of U.S. diplomatic efforts to reach an accommodation with Iran, which exploited and sabotaged U.S. efforts at engagement during the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton Administrations.

Hopeful talk about a new effort at rapprochement represents the triumph of wishful thinking over disappointing experience. The simple truth is that Iranian hard-liners do not want genuinely improved relations with the United States. Not only do they see the U.S. as the "Great Satan," but they fear the temptations that the "Great Satan" can offer. They know that two previous Iranian revolutions were aborted by the defection of Westernized elites, and they fear that better relations with the U.S. will pose a growing threat to their hold on power. Moreover, making the hard compromises that would be necessary to open the door to improved relations would undermine the legitimacy of their revolutionary ideology and weaken their claim to leadership of the Muslim world.

Tehran may go through the motions of a diplomatic dialogue, as it often has in the past, to deflect pressure for more international sanctions and temporarily defuse the nuclear standoff. But a Grand Bargain strategy is likely to result in endless talks about talks that will only enable Iran to buy time to run out the clock, as it completes a nuclear weapon.


Recognize that diplomatic carrots alone won't work because for Tehran, attaining a nuclear weapon is the biggest carrot. The EU-3 diplomatic outreach was heavily based on the offer of economic benefits, technological assistance, and improved diplomatic relations in exchange for Iran's halting of its uranium enrichment activities, but these incentives pale in comparison with the advantages that the regime believes it will attain with a nuclear weapons capability. What is needed is greater focus on tougher disincentives for continuation of Iran's suspect nuclear efforts, including its perceived economic, domestic political, and potential military costs. When Tehran perceives these potential costs as very high, as it did after the overthrow of regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, it will be more likely to make concessions and freeze its uranium enrichment program. To give diplomacy a chance, the United States and its allies must credibly threaten to impose rising costs on the regime, particularly in ways that threaten its hold on power, which is its highest priority.

Opening an interest section would be in the national interest only if American diplomats received ironclad safeguards against terrorism and hostage-taking, which is not possible as long as Iran continues its efforts to support terrorism against American troops, coalition allies, and Iraqis. Your Administration must also be cognizant of the timing of any offer, which could be construed as a sign of weakness by Tehran. Making an offer before Iran's June elections would enhance Ahmadinejad's political prospects and should be avoided.


Lead an international coalition to impose the strongest possible targeted economic sanctions against Iran. The U.S. should try to toughen sanctions against Iran outside of the U.N. framework by working directly with its Japanese and European allies to impose the strongest possible bans on foreign investment, loans, and trade with Iran. The Achilles' heel of Iran's theocratic regime is its mishandling of the economy. There is growing dissatisfaction with this mismanagement and with corruption, high unemployment, and soaring inflation--officially reported at a 30 percent annual rate in September but believed to be higher. There is rising labor unrest. In October, tire factory workers demonstrated in front of the Labor Ministry to protest the failure of factories to pay six months of unpaid back wages. That same month, bazaar merchants rebelled against the imposition of a value-added tax, closing down the bazaars in many cities and forcing the regime to postpone its implementation. The bazaaris had been a cornerstone of support for the revolution against the shah.

Ayatollah Khomeini famously said, "We did not create a revolution to lower the price of melons." But Iran's current leaders lack the personal charisma, religious authority, and popular support needed to ignore the growing backlash against their dysfunctional economic policies, repression of human rights, and failure to meet the needs of the Iranian people. Falling oil prices will further aggravate Iran's festering economic problems and make sanctions more painful.

An international ban on the import of Iranian oil is a non-starter. It is unrealistic to expect oil importers to stop importing Iranian oil in a tight, high-priced oil market. Instead, the focus should be on denying Iran loans, foreign investment, and favorable trade deals. The U.S. should cooper­ate with other countries to deny Iran loans from such international financial institutions as the World Bank and any loans for a proposed natural gas pipeline to India via Pakistan.

Although Iran is one of the world's leading oil exporters, it must import approximately 40 percent of its gasoline needs due to mismanagement and inadequate investment in refinery infrastructure. An international ban on gasoline exports to Iran would drive up the price of Iranian gasoline and underscore the shortsightedness of the regime in the eyes of the Iranian people.


Mobilize allies to contain and deter Iran. Iran's con­tinued support for terrorism and its prospective emergence as a nuclear power threaten many coun­tries. Ahmadinejad's belligerence gives Washington greater opportunity to mobilize other states, partic­ularly those in the growing shadow of Iranian power. The United States should maintain a strong naval and air presence in the Persian Gulf to deter Iran and strengthen military cooperation with the Gulf States, which are growing increasingly anx­ious about Iran's hard-line government.

The U.S. and its European allies should strengthen military, intelligence, and security coop­eration with such threatened states as Iraq, Turkey, Israel, and the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates), which was founded in 1981 to provide collective security for Arab states threatened by Iran. Such a coalition could help both to contain the expansion of Iranian power and to facilitate military action, if necessary, against Iran. Washington should also offer to deploy or sell anti-ballistic missile defense systems to threatened states, enhance joint military planning, and step up joint military exercises focused on the Iranian threat.


Maintain the U.S. commitment to building a stable and democratic Iraq. A cornerstone of any policy to contain Iran must be strong support for an independent, democratic Iraq that is an ally in the war against terrorism. On January 20, you will become the commander in chief of the war in Iraq, and it will no longer be "Bush's war." You must reconsider your pledge to withdraw U.S. combat forces from Iraq within 16 months. While this pledge may have made political sense during the campaign when you mistakenly concluded that the war was lost, such a policy will be disastrous if you cling to it as President. It is now clear that the surge has been a success and the war is winnable. If you remain committed to a rapid pullout according to an arbitrary deadline, you risk squandering the hard-won gains of the surge and plunging Iraq into a humanitarian catastrophe that will jeopardize U.S. national security interests, threaten the stability of the oil-rich Persian Gulf, and leave Iraq more vulnerable to Iranian meddling.

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called a withdrawal timetable "dangerous." You should accept his advice and the considered judgment of military professionals including General David Petraeus, the Commander of Central Command, in adopting a policy of gradual withdrawal and continued support for building Iraqi security forces. You should warn Tehran that continued meddling in Iraq, particularly cross-border support for the "special groups" and other forces hostile to the Iraqi government, will destroy the possibility of better relations with the United States, slow the pace of withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, and increase the size of the residual force that you have promised to maintain in Iraq to assist the Iraqi government in fighting terrorism.


Set conditions on any talks with Tehran that minimize Iran's ability to exploit such talks to defuse international opposition to its hostile foreign policy. One last attempt at a negotiated solution to the nuclear impasse may be necessary, if only to set the stage for the use of military force as a last resort, but your Administration must be careful not to hand Tehran the opportunity to go through the motions of diplomatic dialogue in order to undermine international support for economic sanctions and military action while it continues its nuclear program in secret. Given Iran's long history of taqiyyah diplomacy, duplicity, and denial on the nuclear issue, the United States should enter into direct diplomatic talks only if there is a clear understanding that the talks are not open-ended and that Iran must halt its suspect nuclear activities and agree to robust IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities for the talks to continue beyond a reasonable time limit--one that is measured in weeks, not months. The talks should be conducted through the State Department, not the White House, and the President should rule out any meeting with Iran's leaders unless they have agreed to halt their nuclear weapons program.


Support democratic opposition forces within Iran. A strategy of regime change is problematic and unlikely to succeed before Iran attains a nuclear weapon. The U.S. cannot depend on exile groups. The future of Iran will be determined by groups that have strength on the ground inside Iran. There is considerable grumbling at a lack of freedom, human rights abuses, corruption, and economic problems but no certainty that such grumbling will lead to meaningful change any time soon. A well-educated group of young reform­ers are seeking to replace the cur­rent mullahcracy with a genuine democracy that is accountable to the Iranian people. They were demoralized by former President Khatami's failure to live up to his promises of reform and by his lack of support for the student uprisings of 1999, but a growing popular disenchantment with the policies of President Ahmadinejad is likely to re-ener­gize them.

The U.S. and its allies should discreetly support all Iranian opposition groups that reject terrorism and advocate democracy by publicizing their activ­ities both internationally and within Iran, giving them organizational training, and inviting them to attend international conferences and workshops outside of Iran. Educational exchanges with Western students would help to bolster and open up communications with Iran's restive students, who historically have played a leading role in their country's reform movements. The U.S. should covertly subsidize opposition publications and organizing efforts, as it did to aid the anti-Communist opposition during the Cold War in Europe and Asia. However, such programs should be strictly segregated from public outreach efforts by the U.S. and its allies in order to avoid putting Iranian participants in international forums at risk of arrest or persecution when they return home.

America should not try to play favorites among the various Iranian opposition groups, but should instead encourage them to cooperate under the umbrella of the broadest possible coalition.


Launch a public diplomacy campaign to explain to the Iranian people how the regime's nuclear weapons program and hard-line policies hurt their economic and national interests. Iran's clerical regime has tightened its grip on the media in recent years, shutting down more than 100 independent newspapers, jailing journalists, closing down Web sites, and arresting bloggers. The U.S. and its allies should work to defeat the regime's suppression of independent media by increasing Farsi broadcasts by such government-sponsored media as the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe (Radio Farda), and other information sources. The free flow of information is essential to the free flow of political ideas. The Iranian peo­ple need access to information about the activities of opposition groups, both within and outside of Iran, and the plight of dissidents.


Prepare for the use of military force as a last resort. You have wisely promised that "we will never take military options off the table." There is no guaranteed policy that can halt the Iranian nuclear program short of war, and even a military campaign may only delay Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability. But U.S. policymaking regarding the Iranian nuclear issue inevitably boils down to a search for the least-bad option, and as potentially costly and risky as a preventive war against Iran would be, allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons could result in far heavier costs and risks.

The U.S. could probably deter Iran from a direct nuclear attack by threatening massive retaliation and the assured destruction of the Iranian regime, but there is lingering doubt that Ahmadinejad, who reportedly harbors apocalyptic religious beliefs regarding the return of the Mahdi, would have the same cost-benefit calculus about a nuclear war that other leaders would have. Moreover, his regime might risk passing nuclear weapons off to terrorist surrogates in hopes of escaping retaliation for a nuclear surprise attack launched by an unknown attacker.

Moreover, even if Iran could be deterred from considering such attacks, an Iranian nuclear breakout would undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, and Algeria to seek to build or acquire their own nuclear weapons. Each new nuclear power would multiply the risks and uncertainties in an already volatile region.

Iran also might be emboldened to step up its support for terrorism and subversion, calculating that its nuclear capability would deter a military response. An Iranian miscalculation could easily lead to a military clash with the U.S. or an American ally that would impose exponentially higher costs than would be imposed by a war with a non-nuclear Iran. All of these risks must be considered before deciding on how to proceed if diplomacy fails to prevent the prospect of a nuclear Iran.
Conclusion

Preventing a nuclear Iran is one of the most difficult and dangerous problems that confronts your Administration. You should learn from the experience of past efforts to negotiate with Iran and deal with Tehran from a position of strength, stressing sticks rather than carrots, because for Iran, a nuclear weapon is the biggest carrot. Targeted economic sanctions and the possible use of military force are your biggest sources of leverage. The only hope of aborting the Iranian nuclear bomb lies in convincing Iran's leaders that the economic, diplomatic, and possible military costs of continuing their nuclear program are so high that they threaten the regime's hold on power. Any talks with Iran should be structured to produce quick results and preclude Tehran from stretching out the negotiations indefinitely.

You should rule out a presidential meeting with Iranian leaders until they have agreed to end their nuclear weapons efforts in a verifiable manner based on intrusive international inspections. Accepting anything less will only give Iran's radical regime yet another opportunity to renege on their commitments when it suits their purposes.

James Phillips is Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, and Peter Brookes is Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs in the Davis Institute, at The Heritage Foundation.