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Meanness-Tested Program August 18, 2009 Jay D. Homnick [EXCERPT] The Republicans in Congress are within an ace of winning a huge victory on the issue of health care, a spectacular triumph which can resonate across the countryside. If handled correctly, this success could resound clearly even above the media din. But it would require their doing the one thing they have always held back from, playing the trump card from the inside pocket. That is, to call the Democrats what they are: mean-spirited.... Now is their chance to strike back in kind, to teach a truth in an arena where...

My sister nailed it many years ago when she said, "Your basic human is not such a hot item." Keep that filed in your head as I tell my little tale. About five or six years ago, roughly, I was solicited to write a column every two weeks for the Sunday New York Times Business Section. I was really thrilled. I have written for the Washington Post (when I was a teenager), for the Wall Street Journal edit page under the legendary Bob Bartley, for Barron's, under the really great Alan Abelson and Jim Meagher, for my beloved American Spectator,...

The Obama Adminstration -- is it just President Obama -- seems to delight in provoking the Jewish people by either honoring or appointing individuals who have done one or more of the following: 1. Sided with Israel's enemies in diplomatic or military theaters, thereby giving them both political and strategic support. 2. Provided Israel's enemies with a forum for advancing anti-Semitic or anti-Israel propaganda or have willfully engaged in propagandizing themselves. 3. Singled out Jews and Israel as the primary obstacle peace in the Middle East and have advanced the argument that a Jewish or Israel lobby has created that...

A new congressional report accuses the radical activist group ACORN of organized criminal activities. I will have a full article here on the American Spectator website in the morning about it. The report, called "Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise?" comes from minority staff on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The ranking member on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), is appearing on the "Glenn Beck Program" on Fox News today to discuss the report. The report, available here, contains information about the ACORN network's interlocking directorates, various unethical and possibly unlawful activities, and the shocking...

Rathke is a pioneer of the so-called welfare rights movement that aims to get Americans on welfare. He devotes an entire chapter of his book to what he calls "The 'Maximum Eligible Participation' Solution." It is a strategy for orchestrated crisis that savvy leftist groups across America are likely to embrace. Rathke confirms ... that he is pursuing this strategy that calls for all Americans eligible for welfare payments to pursue every penny the law "entitles" them to. He urges people to "make sure that other people in the community" are actually getting their due from the government. The Maximum...

What follows is a column adducing still more evidence of the trivial nature of the contemporary American news media. The other morning, I was lying in bed recovering from minor surgery, my body heaving off the residual effects of a powerful anesthetic, Proposal. Believe me; it is a powerful anesthetic. It thrust me into the utmost darkness for 40 minutes, according to my doctor. It could have been for eternity. I would have had no idea. I cannot imagine why people abuse such charmless drugs. Why not just pull the trigger as Hemingway pulled the trigger and enter the darkness...

The Mayo Clinic, which President Obama has touted as a model for the rest of the health care system, has delivered a blistering critique of the House Democratic health care bill: "Although there are some positive provisions in the current House Tri-Committee bill – including insurance for all and payment reform demonstration projects – the proposed legislation misses the opportunity to help create higher-quality, more affordable health care for patients. In fact, it will do the opposite."

A warning to President Obama from John F. Kennedy. President Obama has denounced the actions taken by the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court and military, all actions taken under the rule of law -- Honduran law -- in the nonviolent arrest and removal from office of strongman (caudillo) Manuel Zelaya. President Obama's denunciation was based, using Jay D. Homnick's apt phrase, on "standard collegiate peacenik rhetoric." Joining in this shame are the UN General Assembly that approved a resolution by consensus without a formal vote on June 30 (p The General Secretary of the OAS is José Miguel Insulza. He is...

In a rare moment of candor, President Obama explained to an audience how government-run healthcare would work in America....Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

ACORN may be about to embark on a huge rebranding effort in order to reinvent itself...disgraced ACORN founder Wade Rathke has renamed ACORN International, which is ACORN's international consultancy....Rathke is trying to dissociate the ACORN affiliate from the oceans of bad ink ACORN has received in the U.S. over the last year. The new name for the international affiliate is Community Organizations International.

No, I don't think Obama is another OJ Simpson. The two men could not be more different. It's a common marketing strategy that links them. White guilt and that ache for black vindication were a huge part of OJ's celebrity campaign. That's also what got Obama elected over Hillary and then McCain. David Axelrod as a PR maven had obviously studied the opinion polls about black celebrities. They knew that a black man who looked and sounded good on TV could roll over the opposition; the media wouldn't dare to examine his background. OJ had demonstrated it, along with Oprah...

Thursday's Washington Post contained comprehensive coverage, three stories no less, of Barack Obama's presidential memorandum that decrees in these dark days of recession new "benefits to partners of federal workers." But don't worry, your scarce hard-earned tax dollars won't go to all domestic lovers. Just homosexual ones. The memorandum "does not cover domestic heterosexual partners," reports the Post. And who largely drafted the memorandum? John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management, who is "the highest-ranking openly gay person in the administration." Heterosexual sinners need to hire better lobbyists, or hope that Obama soon finds in his impressively massive...

After yesterday's news that the Finance Committe would be delaying its health care legislation while they try to slash $600 billion from a draft of the bill that was priced at $1.6 trillion by the Congressional Budget Office, liberal journalists are getting nervous.

On its current course, the Middle East is headed for nuclear war. The only question is whether someone will act to take history off that course. That won't be the left wing extremist/narcissist we now have in the White House, who is lost in his own dream world. Like Adolf Hitler, the theocrats who run Iran have told us exactly what they plan to do. They plan to build nuclear weapons, and use them to "wipe Israel off the map." They have said this plan is rooted in their fundamental religious beliefs and doctrines regarding the return of their God...

President Obama is demanding dangerous, sweeping new powers to seize financial services companies. [T]he proposal expected to be unveiled tomorrow will be "the most significant new regulation of the financial industry since the Great Depression, including a new watchdog agency to look out for consumers' interests." The plan would give the government "new powers to seize key companies -- such as insurance giant American International Group Inc. -- whose failure jeopardizes the financial system." The news report notes that "[c]urrently, the government's authority to seize companies is mostly limited to banks."

... For conservative commentators Mr. Obama’s election and the turmoil of the opposition present a changed environment, not only from the past eight years when Republicans held the White House, but from the previous three decades, when conservative ideas dominated the national political agenda. Since the financial meltdown, though, many Americans have sought government action, prompting conservative magazines to refocus on first principles and refight battles they assumed had already been won. “We’re seeing free-market capitalism trampled in some new way every 12 hours,” said Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, the magazine William F. Buckley started in 1955, which...

By next week, we'll learn more about GM's hideous bankruptcy "restructuring" plan -- which the government expects to have in its lap by early June. One thing, though, is pretty clear: Performance cars are on the "euthanize" list. No rumor -- a sad fact. GM has confirmed that there will be no more SS Impala over at Chevrolet -- and the supercharged Cobalt SS will be gradually faded out, beginning with the sedan version later this year followed by total extinction (coupes too) the next. Cobalt will return to being exclusively an econo-box and GM will quit trying to compete...

<p>President Obama's radical new nominee to replace Associate Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, used to serve on the board of LatinoJustice PRLDEF (White House backgrounder), one of the racial grievance groups that helped to sink the judicial nomination of Honduran-born Miguel Estrada in 2003.</p>

Based on hints, feints, public pronouncements, and off the record commentary, the administration's stance toward Iran is coming into focus. Without any question, military action against Iran is off the agenda. The Obama administration will do nothing to prevent the further enrichment of uranium by Iran's mullahs, notwithstanding who is elected in that nation's upcoming vote. The negotiations with Iran are based on the premise that Iran can produce as much enriched uranium as it wants as long as a nuclear bomb isn't manufactured. In other words, Obama seeks a "Japanese solution," the conditions for a bomb without actually making...

Back in the 1970s, William F. Buckley Jr. was invited to debate feminist author Germaine Greer at the Oxford Union, but found that he and Greer were unable to agree on the wording of the resolution to be debated. After a long exchange of trans-Atlantic telegrams, Buckley in exasperation cabled his final proposal: "Resolved: Give 'em an inch, they'll take a mile." In that simple phrase, Buckley summed up a basic truth about the conservative instinct. Over and over, we find ourselves fighting what is essentially a defensive battle against the forces of organized radicalism who insist that "social justice"...