Abe Greenwald wants to give George Bush credit for his Iran policy.

Gabriel Schoenfeld wonders whether President Obama could deliver help to Iranian democrats even if he wanted to.

Gateway Pundit has chilling video.  (HT: Instapundit.)

The Stoning of Soraya M had a strong per screen opening for its very limited release.  As it opens in more cities this week, please help to maintain that momentum.

Michael Jackson's death sucked an enormous amount of attention away from the courage of Iranians still battling the regime, but as the posts at Twitter's #iranelection thread show, dissent and demonstrations continue.

More than 2,000 are under arrested in Iran, with hundreds more missing.  Human rights activists supported by President Obama and the rest of the west have to keep up pressure on the regime to release the demonstrators and stop the disappearances.

Politico's Jonathan Martin reports on Mitt Romney's road to 2012.

Any serious GOP contenders for right to take on President Obama will be working for Chris Cristie in New Jersey and Bob McDonnell in Virginia as the only two races of great consequence in 2009 draw closer.

And anyone seeking to seriously challenge for the nomination will have to mount an equivalent to Romney's Free and Strong America PAC to be in a position to help with the crucial 2010 races that are necessary to restore balance to a Beltway tilted far left.

As American troops prepare to turn over almost all combat duties to Iraqi forces this week, the first of what will certainly be a wave of "Iraq as South Vietnam" stories appears on schedule in the New York Times.  Rod Norland's "Ready or Not, Iraq’s Military Prepares to Stand on Its Own" uses the condensed, standard-version short-hand for what happened in Vietnam:

That thought inevitably invites comparisons to President Richard M. Nixon’s Vietnamization strategy, which lasted six years and was a great success at turning over the war effort to the South Vietnamese Army, but a complete failure at helping South Vietnam win.

Tens of thousands of American advisers remained behind, but their presence and high profile “gave the perception that the U.S. was in charge, undercutting the Vietnamese officer corps and creating an unconscious dependency,” Col. Dan Smith, a military analyst and critic of that war, has written. And once American financial, military and advisory support was withdrawn, as it was abruptly in 1975, South Vietnamese Army defeats rapidly became routs.

Next week a new book on the end of the Vietnam War, Ride the Thunder: A Vietnam War Story of Honor and Triumph by Richard Botkin appears that will be crucial reading for everyone watching and hoping for Iraq to succeed, and for the tens of thousands of American military advisors and trainers remaining with their Iraqi counterparts.



Almost everything most people think they know about the end of the Vietnam War is wrong, and thus the lessons about to be drawn from the years 1972 through 1975 and applied to Iraq are going to be wrong as well.  Botkin's book arrives at exactly the right moment to help prevent happening to the brave Iraqis who are taking on the lead role in their country's defense what happen to the South Vietnamese Marine Corps in the aftermath of the collapse of American support for a free South Vietnam.

This is what happens when fascists perceive weakness in their opponents.

Remember this number - 17. That was the magic number of cycles around It's A Small World that Rob Ismael from KRLA and I attempted at Disneyland yesterday. "The Ride," as it's known around these parts, has been improved significantly since our 50 lap extravaganza in 2005. It's brighter, the boats and track are new, the soundtrack is digitally remastered, and there are elements now included all through the ride from most of the Disney animated movies over the last 50 years.

The one thing that hasn't changed, however, is the timing of the ride. Whether you like it or not, once you leave the loading dock, you won't return to it for just under 15 minutes. It averages out to 4.2 cycles per hour. You can pull your boat through by grabbing the side of the track, something that Disney very much frowns upon, as to the guests you ram in the boat in front of you, but at the end of the day, you're still getting four rides and a little bit each hour. Our show is a three hour show. That means about 12 and a half. Fortunately, Hugh didn't specify his start time as being Pacific Time, so we started at 3pm Mountain Time. As the Jimmy Buffett song goes, It's Five O'Clock Somewhere. We chose to start on Mountain Time, and finish on Pacific Time. Here's a bit of HD video - we spare no expense on Disney Day - summing up the day's adventure.



By the way, I wasn't frowning at the end. I was tweeting. It's amazing to note how technology has changed just in the four years since I last did this stunt. I had to use a cell phone then, which only got coverage in the first two and last two rooms of The Ride. This time? The cell worked in every room, and I was able to Twitter all the way through it. Most surreal moment of the day? This tweet:

CPTMichaelW@Radioblogger US Military @ Camp Eggers, Kabul, Afghanistan is rooting for you! Need to wear military manpris...Good luck Duane!

Thank you for your service, Captain. And thanks, too, to all our Disneyland friends, T.C., Cindy, Mike, for always making our Disney days special, to our KRLA team, Richard, Pamela and her naive and utterly collapsable assistant, Jennifer, @jennifersarasue on Twitter, for the coordination and assistance, and of course to Ish, Rob Ismael, who shot and edited the video, and was on the boat the whole time, too. He is probably now in bed sick. 

The Tea Party organizers are ticked, especially with the eight Republicans who voted for cap-and-tax-and-tax-and-tax.

They are right to be, but don't spare any praise for the 40 so-called "moderate" Democrats who voted against the bill but keep Nancy Pelosi as Speaker and Henry Waxman as a powerful committee chair.

Every vote for any Democratic congressman or senator in 2010 is a vote endorsing the radical left lurches of this Congress.

Another great review --"the impact of a Greek tragedy through its masterful grasp of suspense and group psychology, and some superb acting"--  this one by Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times.

Amid the hoopla surrounding Michael Jackson's death, the deadly repression in Iran continues and the protestors need attention from the west if they are to have a chance of avoiding the security services brutal crackdown.  The New York Times reports that "a senior cleric called for demonstrators to be punished ruthlessly and savagely.'”  The most concerete way to demonstrate support for the protestors is to see this movie this weekend.

A list of theaters and screen times is here.

Hmmm. Could be about cap-and-tax, but not really.  Give it a listen.

They could not have read the bill. 

A 300 page amendment to a bill that greatly impacts every American and greatly burdens every American business was introduced at 3:00 AM Friday and passed 16 hours later.

The spectacle of the House voting for a massive tax increase and a 300 page amendment they could not have read is a low point for post-segregationist Congresses.  Never have so few read so little about so important a proposal, and yet brazen forward oblivious to the the deeply embarrassing charade it presents to the world.  Banana republics make a better show of governing themselves than did the U.S. House of Representatives today.

The only good thing about this disaster for the country's reputation is the undeniable message it sends to voters about just how hard left the Democrats are and at the same time just how irresponsible the Obama/Pelosi/Reid majority is.  Not only does today's debacle  strengthen the case for a massive course correction and return to balance in D.C. in 2010, it also should increase resistance to the similarly radical attempt to remake American medicine into a single-payer, government-dominated, Canada-style plan.  A majority so obviously indifferent to the substance of "legislation" they pass should not be trusted with the medicine that Americans need to live well and long.

The country knows the Obama/Pelosi/Reid Democrats are drunk on power and lurching so far to the left as to stun even partisan Democrats.  The Senate may stop this attempt at economic suicide, but independents and Republicans cannot allow the public to forget the recklessness of today's abdication of responsibility by the hard left House leadership.

Another great review --"the impact of a Greek tragedy through its masterful grasp of suspense and group psychology, and some superb acting"--  this one by Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times.

Amid the hoopla surrounding Michael Jackson's death, the deadly repression in Iran continues and the protestors need attention from the west if they are to have a chance of avoiding the security services brutal crackdown.  The New York Times reports that "a senior cleric called for demonstrators to be punished ruthlessly and savagely.'”  The most concerete way to demonstrate support for the protestors is to see this movie this weekend.

A list of theaters and screen times is here.

The Pelosi Democrats will try and push through the massive tax hike that is disguised as "cap and trade" today, and the 1200 plus page bill is constantly changing and of course has not been read much less understood by the Democrats voting for it.  If this bill or anything remotely like it becomes law, the American economy will be pushed into a deep recession that will make the past six months look like the good old days.

Moderates and conservatives are wrong to expect that the Senate will simply kill the bill, though all efforts will have to be switched immediately to the upper chamber if the Pelosi/Waxman/Markey radicals bribe enough Dems with special provisions to pass it today.  The so-called Blue Dog Democrats are proving to be worthless as a check on the hard left of their party, and only a huge course correction in November 2010 will keep the country safe from the radicals currently running the Democratic caucus in the House.  No one who votes for this bill can claim to be a "moderate Democrat."

The Heritage Foundation estimates the costs of the Waxman-Markey monster tax:

An analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill (as reported out of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce) by The Heritage Foundation found that unemployment will increase by nearly 2 million in 2012, the first year of the program, and reach nearly 2.5 million in 2035, the last year of the analysis. Total GDP loss by 2035 would be $9.4 trillion. The national debt would balloon as the economy slowed, saddling a family of four with $114,915 of additional national debt. Families would also suffer, as the bill would slap the equivalent of a $4,609 tax on a family of four by 2035.[1]

Michelle Malkin has a list of Hosue members who could use many calls via 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121.  Make some calls today to fence-sitters.

Thursday night was fun. The challenge? Go visit the TLT Dance Club in Tomorrowland, catch the Electrical Parade at Disney's California Adventure, see the fireworks show back at Disneyland, plus watching Phantasmic and a visit to Pixie Hollow...in manpris.

Here is the video.





Disneyland has truly turned into a resort that takes multiple days to see all there is to see and have the time to enjoy it. Even with racing across the parks, I still didn't get to see everything on the agenda this evening, and only got to ride one ride in the process. 

Emmett of the Unblinking Eye will unveil the top ten animated Disney movies of all time, Stacia Martin, Hugh's official Sherpa of all things Disney, and yes, The Ride, Part 2, will all commence on the Friday edition of the Hugh Hewitt Show.

I am helping CrossInternational.org with its orphans project in Mozambique on today's program.

You can make a donation online.

Or you can call 1-888-488-2008.

Today's New York Times carries a story with this stunning fact:

Africa is full of at least 50 million orphans, the legacy of AIDS and other diseases, war and high rates of death in pregnancy and childbirth.

Obviously the enormous problem of orphans across the continent is immense, but you can help one child find a family with a donation of just $68.

As Karl Rove notes in this morning's Wall Street Journal, "[b]y a 60%-to-31% margin, Americans prefer getting their health coverage through private insurance rather than the federal government."

The president is selling his deeply flawed plan hard and via dishonest means (see below) for a reason --Americans with health insurance don't want to lose what they have and be dumped by their employers into President Obama's vast new government bureaucracy.

IF the public understands what the president is pushing, they will rebel and swamp Congress with demands that it be stopped.

BUT MSM is doing its best to clear a trail for the new president they adore, and conservative talkers and new media can only do so much to sound the alarm.

The key to defeating the government takeover of health care is for health care providers to consciously adopt the practice of informing their patients that their future care is being debated in July and August on the Hill, and that Democrats are pushing a takeover plan that will force millions of Americans out of their current health care insurance and into a government plan, a government plan that will almost certainly be far less satisfactory to those covered by private insurance today.

Doctors, if you have begun to educate your patients about this looming threat to their well-being, please drop me a note at hugh@hughhewitt.com.

What do you tell your patients to do?  Print copies of the paragraphs below and put it next to your sign-in sheet:

DEAR PATIENTS:

As you may know, Congress is currently debating whether the government ought to set up a massive new government agency to sell federal government health insurance company.

If this proposal passes --it is called the "government option" or the "public plan"-- many of you who currently get your medical insurance through your employer will find that your employer will quickly switch health insurance providers and place you with the government option/public plan.

As your doctor, I fear that a government option/public plan will greatly reduce the scope of services you can obtain without prior government approval, and that the government will greatly reduce what doctors and hospitals receive in payment for their services.  These changes will lead many doctors to refuse to treat patients covered by the government option/public plan.  Others will greatly reduce the time they spend with patients covered by the government option/public plan.

As your doctor, I urge you to pay close attention to this debate and to make your opinion known to Congress.  Call your congressman or senators via the Congressional switchboard at 202-225-3121 and let them know you oppose the government takeover of health care.  If a staffer tells you that the public plan isn't a takeover, tell them politely but forcefully that the government option/public plan most certainly is a government takeover and that you are opposed to it.

There are many problems with the health insurance industry in America, but turning medicine into a government-run program is not the solution.

President Obama refuses to come clean on his "government option/public plan" and the devastation it would visit on health insurance in the U.S.  The subject came up on ABC's infomercial for the president's push for radical restructuring of American medicine last night:

On the "Nightline" edition of the health care forum, Gibson read the president a letter from Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee expressing concern about the creation of a government-run health care plan.

"At a time when major government programs like Medicare and Medicaid are already on a path to fiscal insolvency, creating a brand new government program will not only worsen our long-term financial outlook but also negatively impact American families who enjoy the private coverage of their choice," the senators wrote.

"The end result would be a federal government takeover of our health care system, taking decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients and placing them in the hands of a Washington bureaucracy."

"They're wrong," the president said, arguing that in a Health Insurance Exchange, the public plan would be "one option among multiple options."

The concern, Gibson articulated, is that such a plan wouldn't be offered on a level playing field.

The president rebuffed that, arguing that "we can set up a public option where they're collecting premiums just like any private insurer and doctors can collect rates," but because the public plan will have lower administrative costs "we can keep them [private insurance companies] honest."

Obama said he didn't understand those advocates of the free market who constantly say the private sector can do things better and are yet worried about this plan.

"If that's the case, no one will choose the public option," the president said. He also suggested, however, that the private sector might not necessarily be better, point out that users of Medicare and Veterans Administration hospitals constantly rate "pretty high satisfaction."

The fundamental dishonesty here is that the president refuses to acknowledge that the government option/public plan will be subsidized by the federal government in a number of ways and thus will be cheaper for employers to chose for their employees, and they will chose it, sending tens of millions of Americans now covered by private insurers into the public plan, dramatically driving up federal costs while crippling the private sector insurance industry.  Once dumped into the plan, the employees will wonder what happened to the president's promise --often repeated-- that "if you like your plan you can keep it."

This is the central dishonesty of the entire scheme: Democrats want to push through a giant bait-and-switch that will act as a giant magnet for employers.  The quality of the care will be vastly inferior to that provided by the health care system of today, and as costs skyrocket, the control of those outlays will be imposed via rationing of services and the imposition of waiting lists.

If the plan was defensible, the president would defend it openly and at length rather than with absurd deflections like the phrase "keeping the private sector honest."

Tens of millions of Americans will be stripped of the health insurance they currently have and with it many of their doctors if the Obama plan becomes law.  They will be forced into a health care system that doesn't exist and when it is built will be run by federal bureaucrats.  That's the truth of what is being pushed, and every congressman and senator who votes for this scheme should be tossed out of office in 17 months.

If you have not already done so, please sign the petition to block this government takeover of health care.

Then contact information for so-called moderate Democrats in the House is here.

Contact information for for Democratic senators who might have the backbone to stand up against this massive fraud on the public is at the bottom of this post.