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 End of Day
-11/10/09
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
To: Friends & Supporters
From: Gary L. Bauer
Terrorist Pen Pals
We now know that Fort Hood murderer Nidal Malik Hasan sent
between 10 and 20 messages to Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamofascist cleric known
for his exhortations for Muslims to rise up and kill the infidels.
Counterterrorism officials intercepted the communications but concluded (are
you sitting down?) that the e-mails were probably part of a research project
on post-traumatic stress disorder that the psychiatrist had been conducting
at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Really? Anwar al-Awlaki is an expert on jihadist exhortation and incitement.
He can wax eloquent about how to cut the throat of the non-believer and what
an appropriate ritual beheading requires. He is not in any normal world a
resource for research into post-traumatic stress.
No matter how “innocent” the e-mails seemed to our “intelligence” community,
alarm bells should have gone off when an Army major sent messages to a
murderous thug. Even a cursory examination would have turned up other
information on Hasan’s rants, his increasing anti-Americanism and the
evidence he was becoming a Muslim warrior.
After the Fort Hood rampage, al-Awlaki praised Nidal Hasan on his web page.
He wrote, “Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not
bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that
is fighting against his own people. This is a contradiction that many
Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Any decent
Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator
and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a U.S. soldier.”
Here’s a thought: Perhaps our homeland security people are so traumatized by
the constant leftwing attack accusing them of violating constitutional
rights that they have been rendered ineffective. CIA officers have been
threatened with prosecutions, and phone companies may be sued out of
business for cooperating with the Bush Administration on wiretaps in the
aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Some of our counterterrorism officials may be
so worried about ending up in jail if they are too aggressive that they have
become paralyzed by political correctness.
How Much? Who Knows?!
The healthcare battle now heads to the Senate where there is a lot of
uncertainty about what will happen. But here’s one thing that we can say
with certainty: With 2,000 pages of legislation to digest, we will be
discovering more “time bombs” in the House bill for days and weeks to come.
Just consider the most basic question: How much will it cost? According to
most press accounts, the socialized medicine scheme passed this weekend by
the House of Representatives will cost taxpayers another $1.2 trillion over
the next ten years. But those estimates are meaningless. To begin with, the
government has a very poor
track record of estimating the costs of federal programs. They
frequently end up being much larger than originally thought.
But the bean counters’ best guesses are further frustrated by the word games
that liberal politicians love to play. For example, today’s Washington
Times reports that the just-passed House healthcare bill includes “two
dozen programs whose funding is listed as ‘such sums as may be necessary.’”
How much is that going to cost? Who knows? But here’s my translation of the
text: “Such sums as we decide to take out of your paycheck.”
But don’t just take my word for it. Writing in The New Yorker last
week, leftwing economics reporter John Cassidy laid bare the socialism of
ObamaCare. Here are some excerpts of his column:
“The future cost savings that the Administration and its
congressional allies are promising to deliver are based on wishful
thinking and sleight of hand. Over time, the reform, as proposed, would
almost certainly add substantially to the budget deficit, thereby
worsening the long-term fiscal crisis that the country faces. …If
health-care reform goes through, and the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011, top
earners will face a marginal tax rate of forty-five per cent at the
federal level. Add in state and local taxes, plus Social Security and
Medicare payments, and wealthy people … would be facing tax rates of about
sixty percent. …
“So what does it all add up to? The U.S. government is making a costly and
open-ended commitment to help provide health coverage for the vast
majority of its citizens. …But let’s not pretend that it isn’t a big deal,
or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as
planned. It won’t. Many Democratic insiders know all this, or most of it.
What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many
conservatives feared. The Obama Administration … is creating a new
entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible
to rescind.”
That’s why we must work even harder to defeat this bill now. Just consider
for a moment what 60% tax rates will do to unemployment, now already at
10.2%. And equal to the amount of money that Big Government takes from you
will be the amount of freedom you will lose as it dictates to your doctor
what procedures you can and cannot get.
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