Monday's program promises to be one of the most important we've ever broadcast in the nine year history of the Hugh Hewitt Show. Congress is set to begin a month-long debate in both the House and Senate on what American health care will look like once the politicians are finished with it.

The House version of the legislation is well over a thousand pages long, and the Senate version is not much shorter. Both contain the Trojan horse called the government option, or the public option, or the single payer plan. This must be stopped if Americans don't want to be dumped by their employers into a vastly expensive expansion of Medicare which would not only bankrupt the country, but ration care and cause lines waiting for care that would make Great Britain and Canada look efficient by comparison. 

What can you do to help stop the public option from passing? Get educated. That's exactly what Monday's program is all about. Hugh will bring on three experts in the health care field, left, center and right on the political scale, and not only discuss the pros and cons of the current proposed legislation, but offer real alternatives to the nightmare that is coming if Obamacare passes.
 
Dr. Irwin Redlener, co-founder and president of the Children's Health Fund and doctor of pediatrics at Columbia University, Professor Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School and co-author of The Innovator's Prescription, and Dr. Robert Moffit of Heritage Foundation's Center for Health Policy Studies will all join Hugh for an hour. The transcripts and appropriate links to their work will follow in a subsequent post. Your mission? Listen to all three hours. Listen to the podcasts that will be posted after the show. Get informed as to what is being proposed, what you think about it, what alternative solutions are, and then by all means, get engaged in the debate. Americans are only going to have one window of time, July, to stop the ruination of America's health care system. Now is the time to get involved. Listen, learn, and then get in the game.   

Guest post by Jude


      Now that my quixotic application for lifetime membership in the Sarah Palin Defenders Club is complete in the post below, let me say a humble hello to the intimidatingly smart readers and listeners who make up Hugh's audience.  Hugh has asked Duane to put up with me while I write here occasionally in his absence.  My thanks to both.
     Listening to Hugh on the air played a large part in my "coming-out-as-a-conservative" in the music business.  I'm no big name, by ANY stretch of the imagination, but I have made my living writing and touring for the better part of the last fifteen years while living in Hollywood, so I'll try to write from that perspective where it applies. 
     As we commemorate nothing less than revolution with hot dogs and fireworks, here's an appropriate post by film-maker Chris Burgard over at Big Hollywood, where I'm something of a crony.  Now I'm off to don my red, white and blue pants (and if I can ever figure out how to import photos with this Townhall software, I'll post a picture of their embarassing glory...) Happy 4th to you all, and smooth sailing to Hugh and the gang!

Guest post by Jude

Sarah Palin Is Running A Marathon.

It's called life.

It was quite a news day to be off in the canyons and away from cell signal or wifi. Although I might be the last person to comment on the Alaskan Governor’s announcement today, please indulge my being late to the pity party,  because I still love me some Sarah Palin.  By the time I heard, the spin had already begun, but I didn’t want to hear any of it.  I just felt that this must be a terrible move on her part, or a really unfortunate choice she felt compelled to make for some reason we might find out about later.  Either way was depressing.  As so many have already said, being labeled a quitter isn’t going to help her make a run for national office any time soon.
But Sarah Palin isn’t a quitter.  I know this because, well, because just last night I read her interview in Runner’s World.  Sample quote (noting that she is, to my knowledge, the only political figure who is consistently quoted phonetically: (RW)"What about in a race? Could you beat the president?
(SP)"I betcha I'd have more endurance. My one claim to fame in my own little internal running circle is a sub-four marathon. It wasn't necessarily a good running time, but it proves I have the endurance within me to at least gut it out and that is something. If you ever talk to my old coaches, they'd tell you, too. What I lacked in physical strength or skill I made up for in determination and endurance. So if it were a long race that required a lot of endurance, I'd win.”

Sarah Palin is running a marathon.

I drove home to sit at my computer and watch the video, ready to see this meandering statement I was hearing about.  As so many times before though, when I finally saw her own, un-edited words - instead of the punditry - I came away understanding.  The explanations were right there, some in her voice, and some in the things she couldn’t quite say, but alluded to.  Here, I’ll say a few of them for her: 

- I’m a lightning rod for attacks, and they will not stop.  I am attacked in sexist ways no Democrat would be expected to tolerate, my family is treated like a bunch of drug-addled reality stars, and the media is trying to marginalize me into some sort of Brittney Spears (the bad times) figure. This is because they fear my ever being respected, and they hate the way we are, but that’s not a fight I need to have on your dime.  This is making it almost too difficult to govern,  too difficult for Alaska to be properly stewarded by me, your elected representative. The assaults I’m under, both frivolous lawsuits and the media blasts that have to be responded to in some way, are costing both me and (she did say this part) Alaska more money than it is responsible for me to allow any longer. 

- The Left declared me “fair game”, and I can’t afford to fight it alone and do right by you.  In fact, if I stay it harms Alaska, because that’s how bad it has become.  And it’s not just the media, believe me…  Basically, you don’t need my target on your head! 

- I use the basketball analogy because it’s a kind way of describing what has happened to me and my family, not so wannabe cool kids can make fun of it, even though they will.  When you’re being triple-teamed constantly, the responsible thing to do is pass the ball.  Get it?  No one else is a strong enough player to help draw the coverage right now – God knows Newt doesn’t have the game he used to, and Rush is busy in the locker room  fighting off thirty Alinskyites with nothing but girth and a golden microphone he’s swinging.  I am being swarmed, swamped and kicked in the knees, and there is no drawing a foul in this game, because the ref is only wearing media credentials.

- Steve Schmidt is a jerk.    (End bad Palin channeling.)

When I heard Old Man McCain had picked Sarah Palin for VP I shuddered.  Her talent and character don’t come along together very often, she had good work ahead of her in office, and going down with that ship was not what she needed.  Same with Jindal.  Yet, there I was at the convention, (probably with better seats than Duane, I'm just saying...) trading elbows with Andrew Breitbart as we declared our love for the most charismatic GOP’er since Reagan.  On the way home that night I was called by a musician friend who wanted my take on her, because she was intimidating as a new candidate.  I told him – and I’m not claiming any kind of prescience here, because it was plain to see – that now the race was on to define her.  It was the Media vs. the RNC, and we all knew who was going to win that one.  ‘Aww, no,’ I recall him saying, ‘ it isn’t like that.  You’re paranoid.”
Cue the Trig garbage, brutal magazine covers, NBC/SNL, etc.  Some of the smartest people I know have told me that Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house...
As Hugh said on the air the other day while talking to Jim Geraghty,  “everything she is is the antithesis of everything that liberal urban elites are, so it's not just enough to say, 'I disagree with you,'; she has to be repudiated and crushed."  And she almost has been. They said she was a fool.  They said she was a criminal.  They said she had had an affair.  They said Trigg wasn’t her child.  Now they’ll call her a quitter, and they’ll be wrong again.

So where does she go from here?  Well, as she might say, a Mama bear fights back when her cubs are threatened, but at some point, when the attacks are relentless and show no signs of ending…she may just pull her cubs back into the cave if she can.  The problem with that move is that Palin’s domicile is a looong flight from the lower 48 (what we all call America).  As governor, every time she pops her head up they try to take it off. Think about it - what kind of a governor can she be if the only business she really gets done by going to New York is to affect Letterman’s ratings?  The conventional wisdom has been that she should stay in Alaska, do well and get “better” at stuff.  The problem with that strategy is that she’d be too far from the media centers to fight back against the head-shots that will keep coming at her anyway.  She’s no quitter.  She’s just running her own race.
Imagine the kitchen table conversation at the Palin house.  ‘Hey, would you guys like this stuff to stop for a while, and for Dad and I to have the option to fight back against it when does happen, and to fight for good people more often, at our own pace, on our own schedule?  Would you like it if I can be home more often but also do more for America?  Oh, and do you think I should be responsible and step aside as governor since the bad guys have made every day I remain in office more damaging to the state?’
‘Hell, yeah.’  (I like to think that one was Piper.)

Sarah Palin is the biggest star in politics after the sophist in the oval office, and Sarah Palin has been abandoned by too much of the Right.  Mitt Romney is a cyborg and probably has 2012 in hand already, which I think is great.  Love the guy, think we should be so lucky.  But how can the GOP and the RNC fail to defend and champion Palin?  She is a superstar media talent who’s natural charisma could light the sun.  Don’t listen to the garbage about how she hurt the ticket - that’s something Democrats tell themselves to sleep at night.  She is a major voice in the conservative movement, the most prominent female Republican, and on and on.  Is it so hard to defend her at parties that we have to say she’s finished, or that we never thought she could make it back anyway?  If she’s taking herself out of politics, then fine, we can let her be… but don’t bet on it.  Sanford has clearly taken himself off the board, but she’s securing and defending her place.  Palin has a remarkable killer instinct and she climbed the political ladder in a way no one expected.  She may very well be passing the ball because she believes it’s the right thing to do, but she’s also going to become a more effective national figure by doing so.  We might see more of her, not less, and if that’s the case, will the RNC want to help her?  More importantly, will it even know how?  I think it’s just as likely that she’s going to learn how to play the national media all by herself, and she may be better for it in the end.

And if I’m wrong and this is the beginning of the end of Palin’s political career?  Well, as I said at the top of the post, this race is called life, and no one could blame her for making sure she wins that one.

It's been a wild series of news stories this week, and just because today is a national holiday, the news hasn't gotten any less weird. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced in a press conference today that not only is she not going to re-run for a second term as governor, she is resigning as governor in two weeks, turning the job over to Lt. Governor San Parnell.

What was a meteoric rise to national prominence after being selected as John McCain's vice president candidate last fall, Palin's announcement today all but ends any speculation that she is a front-runner for the presidency in 2012. 

I was at the Xcel Center in St. Paul when Governor Palin gave her acceptance speech, which was a remarkable moment in electoral politics. Conservatives instantly fell in love with her energy, spunk and toughness. She injected much-needed enthusiasm into the GOP campaign, and regardless of the attacks on her by the media, continued to this day to be talked about as a potential 2012 contender. 

The speculation now, of course, will be to determine why she is resigning during her first term. Some Sarah fans will try to spin this as a shrewd political move to a possible presidential run, but what remains to be seen is if Governor Palin can not only overcome all of the stereotypes and ridicule the left has heaped upon her and her family, with much aid and assistance from mainstream media, but if she can overcome the stigma of being a quitter on top of that. 

We thank Governor Palin for her impact on politics, and for bringing new voters to Republican ranks last fall. We wish her continued success on whatever new ventures she undertakes.  

As America prepares for a weekend of watching fireworks, the Pentagon is apparently ready to shoot at least the North Korean-made one down, if necessary.  Some are calling a potential missile shoot-down a bold move. I disagree. A bold move, and maybe a more proper one, would be to blow the missile up on the pad in North Korea before it gets launched. 

If Kim Jung Il does fire off the rocket as expected in the general direction of Hawaii, and the military deems it to be on a trajectory that could do damage and has to shoot it down, will the media recognize and thank George W. Bush for allowing for the defensive capability to become realized? Will a reporter go visit Michigan Senator Carl Levin, who has always been the point man for the anti-missile defense crowd in Congress, and ask him if America truly would have been safer allowing the missile to hit wherever on Hawaii it was aimed?
 
Furthermore, will there be one question asked of Barack Obama in his next press conference about whether it's really a good idea to cut missile defense spending in the military budget precisely when it's turning out it's a really, really good idea to have that weapon in the defense arsenal?

Meanwhile, we hope that Hawaii is able to enjoy a safe and sane 4th of July, free of Taepodong-2 rockets.

My new Townhall.com column looks ahead to the weekend.

Transcripts of yesterday's conversations with Mark Steyn about Michael Jackson as well as the offensive in Afghanistan and the turmoil in Honduras, and with Mitt Romney about President Obama's push for the "government option/public plan" are posted.

Today's program begins with an interview with Richard Botkin about his new book, Ride the Thunder:  A Vietnam War Story of Triumph and Honor.



Botkin's book is a history of Vietnam told through the stories of five Marines: three American and two Vietnamese.  Though the heart of the book is the desperate days around the 1972 Easter Offensive, the book begins with the first deployments of American troops and ends with the reeducation camps and the long journey to America of some of our greatest allies in the long war we eventually gave up on.  As the country watches the pull-out of our troops from Iraq's cities and the deployment of thousands of Marines into Helmland River Valley yesterday, the book could not be more timely or more riveting.  The peril that our military faces in combat competes with a thousand silly stories every day, and Botkin's book helps civilians understand what it is like for the warrior, then and now, to fight for freedom --our own and that of our allies.

The third hour today continues the set-up for our Fourth of July celebrations by asking Biola University's John Mark Reynolds and David Allen White, just retired from three decades of teach at the United States Naval Academy, what it was the Framers thought they were borrowing from the ancients and why we even ought to care today.

Tomorrow's program is a long conversation with one of the country's greatest intellects, Professor Harry Jaffa on the central ideas surrounding the American founding.

I know that today and tomorrow aren't all Michael Jackson all the time, but the genius and courage of Philadelphia 1776 deserve some attention even as the LKMs (see below) pile up around Jackson.

If any of the conversations prompt you to appreciate the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines of today, please consider marking the holiday with a contribution to the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund.

Now a blogging note.  I won't be totally missing from these pages over the next two weeks, but I am trying to get the tendonitis in my elbow to move on, which my doctor tells me won't happen until I move away from the keyboard.  So that's what I'll be doing, which means less blogging and far fewer e-mail responses for a couple of weeks. 

Duane will pick up his blogging pace, and to pitch in, my pal Jude will throw in as well.  If you haven't yet become acquainted with this exceptional musician and very thoughtful commentator via his posts Big Hollywood, you will quickly come to agree with me that he is a much-needed voice of reason from within a portion of the entertainment industry that doesn't often provide center-right commentary.  Thanks in advance to Jude and Duane and to you for your patience as I slack off for a couple of weeks.

The June jobs report is out, and almost half a million Americans who had employment at the beginning of June have now lost their jobs. Do you remember the rhetoric used by the Obama administration earlier in the year to sell the non-stimulus stimulus bill, which turned out to be a trillion dollars, more or less, of pork projects?

Larry Summers told Wolf Blitzer on CNN back in February that, "You'll see the effects begin almost immediately. Christina Romer told Fox News around the same time that, "We will start adding jobs, rather than losing them at more than a half million a month." 

Let's face it - they were wrong. And Republicans said they'd be wrong, and voted en masse in the Congress against the bill. For a stimulus to be effective, it has to be targeted, temporary and actually stimulative. President Obama and the Democrats put forth no such bill, and the results speak for themselves.  

We're now four months later, and the same Democrats who brought you the non-stimulus bill, that hasn't stimulated anything except the deficit and national debt by any measurable standard, are not only trying to say, 'trust us' again with the cap and tax and tax and tax bill, but trust us with taking over the entire country's health care system.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice and thrice, shame on me. Call your Senators. The dollars proposed are too massive to cede to a group of people who just went to the well and came up rocks. 202-224-3121. It doesn't matter whether they're Democrat or Republican. Just say no.  

"LKM" stands for Larry King Minutes --the number of broadcast minutes that Larry King would devote to your death if it occurred today.  Michael Jackson has set a very high standard, swamping all other coverage from Larry's show and triggering hours and hours of extra programming from Larry.

Steven Pressfield has written some of my favorite novels --Gates of Fires, The Tides of War and Killing Rommel.

Now Pressfield has produced a series of op-ed videos, available at this website.  He's my guest today and will be back next Wednesday during fiction week.

I interviewed Michael Steele yesterday, and pressed the GOP Chair on the obvious problem ahead in 2012 when Democrats with nothing better to do will swamp GOP primaries and caucuses with the intention of screwing up the Republican nomination process.  Read the transcript of the whole interview here, but this is the key exchange:

HH: But what about, you know, bringing up some closed primaries to compete with Iowa and New Hampshire, say you know, we’re only going to allow you to vote at the same…so that they don’t have the disproportioned impact that they have right now?

MS: Well, we’re looking, we’ve started the review of the 2012 primary process last week. We’re going to have a first set of hearings at our summer meeting in July. And we’re beginning to look right now at all the critical steps that we need to take to protect our primaries, to be competitive, and to allow for a process in which, again, the vote is not hijacked by the Democrats, and you know, as some Republicans feel we get a candidate that we don’t want or deserve or whatever. We want a process that we control, that we have the ultimate say in the outcome in, and not be beholden to the Democrats front-loading with…

HH: Well, who’s going to…how’s that going to work, Chairman Steele? Who’s on that committee? When do they report? Who decides?

MS: Well, that committee, again, was formed largely before I became chairman by two members from each of the regions of the country. Then I made the completing selections, six members who are, excuse me, nine members who are non-RNC members…

HH: Hey, my phone didn’t ring, Michael?

MS: (laughing)

HH: Did I not check my messages?

MS: Look, I need you where you are…

HH: Oh, I can do both.

MS: You can do both?

HH: Yeah, I’m waiting here. That is my committee. I’ve got to be on that, because I’m serious as death on this stuff. They’re going to steal this from us.

MS: Well, let me put it to you this way. When we have our hearing from the public, I’ll make sure you know about it and you come out and get on the record.

HH: I want a vote. I don’t want to be a witness. I’ve been a witness for years. I want a vote, Michael Steele. Count every vote! Count Hugh’s vote!

MS: I hear you, Hugh. I hear you.

My phone still hasn't rung, and I doubt it will because the last thing the RNC wants is a public process that encourages activists to demand accountability from the party "leadership."

Chairman Steele has been doing an excellent job when it comes to fundraising, but if the primary system remains broken, the race to retake the White House will give President Obama a headstart the GOP simply cannot afford.

Here's the list of appointees from the RNC's press release:

RNC CHAIRMAN MICHAEL STEELE ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENTS TO TEMPORARY DELEGATE SELECTION COMMITTEE
WASHINGTON - Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele today announced the appointment of Ohio National Committeeman Bob Bennett, Wisconsin National Committeeman Steve King, Florida National Committeeman Paul Senft, former Maryland Secretary of State Mary Kane, former Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis, former Office of Personnel Management Director Kay James, former Iowa Republican Party Chairman Brian Kennedy, former White House Spanish media spokesperson Mercy Schlapp, and former New Hampshire Attorney General Tom Rath to the RNC Temporary Delegate Selection Committee.

"I am proud to announce the appointments of this impressive group of people to the RNC Temporary Delegate Selection Committee.  They are all exceptionally qualified people and I look forward to working with them in the future," said Chairman Steele.

The RNC Temporary Delegate Selection Committee serves to review the timing of the election, selection, allocation, or binding of delegate and alternate delegates to the Republican National Convention. In accordance with The Rules of the Republican Party, the RNC Chairman appoints three RNC members and six non-members to the RNC Temporary Delegate Selection Committee, which is already comprised of four elected RNC members.

Some good people and some people I have never heard of --and no one with national name ID.  If real reform is going to come to the primary process, a group of senior figures from the heart of the party needs to be given 90 days to come up with a plan, and the states a similar hard deadline to approve of it.  Otherwise the GOP will slouch to "more of the same" in 2012, with the result that the DNC and affiliated activist groups will have a huge role in the selection of President Obama's Republican opponent.

Next week is "thrillers" week on the show with interviews with Brad Thor, Alex Berenson, Steven Pressfield, Daniel Silva and Vince Flynn running on Tuesday through Friday.

As an appetizer to next week's feast, though, I'll spend the third hour of today's program with English novelist (and very successful non-fiction writer as well) Peirs Paul Read, whose new thriller The Death of a Pope is vastly superior in every way to The DaVinci Code and others of the genre.



UPDATE: The transcript of my interview with Read is here.

President Bush must be watching today's celebrations in Iraq with great interest, though doubtless without any expectation that the MSM which was so wrong for so long about Iraq will pause to recall that in late 2006, Bush undertook a change in strategy in Iraq that led to today's celebrations in the country liberated from Saddam and now generally secure from terrorists.

Many, many senior American political figures --including President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid-- pronounced the war in Iraq lost in 2006, and declared that the surge could not work and was not worth the effort.

But today Iraq is a free country because of the surge, and though hardly a completely secure and stable democracy, Iraq is on the path that could make it the anchor of freedom in the Muslim world while its fascist neighbor Iran is convulsed with demonstrations and unmasked to the world as the most repressive regime in the region.

The new Administration could still forfeit the hard won, extremely costly victory in Iraq through fecklessness or a desperate need to please the hard-left fringe in the United States that will forever understand victory in Iraq as a rebuke to their hatred of Bush and their blindness to the true stakes of the war.  Every day of freedom the Iraqis enjoy is a day that MoveOn.org and the rest of the gang wanted to deny the Iraqi people.  They helped President Obama win an election of course, but they are losing the battle with history every single day, and days like today must drive that home and drive them into a deserved gloom over their own failed plans to see America humbled.

The Pacific Legal Foundation aks your help in appealing to Arnold to try and save tens of thousands of Californai jobs.

From our favorite anonymous ad exec:

The last piece I wrote to you seemed to have struck a chord.  I typically get a good bit of support emails at bearinthewoods84@gmail.com when I write you, but nothing like what I got from the last post.  I've heard from people in advertising and film who feel the same way I do, and understand the issue with the GOP's communications.  Like, me, these are credentialed folks who work in communications and entertainment.  And like me, we're all questioning whether there's any understanding in the party that they truly need well-crafted messaging, on top of solid positions. 

One of the emails that made me feel the best about what I've been writing to you pointed me to this post: http://tinyurl.com/np2gg4  It's a PBS interview with Phil Dusenberry, one of the legends of the advertising industry, and one of the members of the Tuesday Team that crafted the Bear in the Woods spot.  Have a read.  Phil makes many of the same points I've made here -- the need for an emotional connection, the need to use craft to make the message something that connects with people.  These principles apply, regardless of the message, or the medium it's delivered in.  I've seen more recent interviews with Phil, and, yes, he's very old-school advertising.  But because I work almost completely in new media, I understand that the basics apply, regardless.  You still have to tell the story in a way that engages people.  Our side doesn't do that well.  We have a better story.  We craft it badly. 

The other side?  Glad you asked.  The Cannes Advertising festival finished up over the weekend.  It's a celebration and awards show for the best advertising on the planet.  Taking both the Tittanium Lion, and the Integrated Grand Prix -- "Yes We Can," the entry from the Obama/Biden campaign.  We have our work cut out for us.  I know there's an audience for a well-crafted conservative message.  I know there's the means to craft that message.  I just don't know if there's a client.  If anyone from the party has been reading along, it's past time.  

The seemingly never-ending legal debate over whether or not government can use the race of Americans in awarding benefits or inflicting penalties added another chapter today as a majority of the Supreme Court issued a narrow, Justice Kennedy-authored ruling overturning the decision below in the Ricci case and holding that "we need not reach the question whether respondents’ actions may have violated the Equal Protection Clause. "  Neither the outcome nor the split is surprising.  The text of the opinion is here.

One of the most interesting questions that senators questioning Judge Sotomayor could pose is whether this holding or the Equal Protection clause-related precedents are "superprecedents," like Roe and Casey are said to be by liberal senators.