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Jennifer Rubin has more from UN Watch on Mary Robinson’s record of bias against Israel at the UN.
…In a separate post, UN Watch concludes:
The evidence is clear. As described by the late Tom Lantos, throughout the lead-up to the 2001 Durban conference Mary Robinson was part of the problem, not the solution. At preparatory sessions in Tehran and Geneva she consistently justified and encouraged a selective focus on Israel. While she did make statements against anti-Semitic manifestations at the conference itself, these were too little and too late. Robinson may not have been the chief culprit of the Durban debacle, but she is its preeminent symbol.
The problem was not just Durban. UN Watch interacted with Robinson when she was U.N. rights chief in Geneva from 1997 to 2002 and closely monitored her tenure. Though she did speak out aptly in various instances, Robinson consistently displayed one-sided criticism of Israel matched with indifference to Palestinian terrorism.
The U.S. government rightly stood up for principle in April when it opposed any reaffirmation of the flawed 2001 Durban declaration. Whatever her other accomplishments, Robinson’s actions in the Durban process and the bias she displayed throughout her tenure as UN human rights chief were not worthy of this award. …
Marty Peretz also comments Mary Robinson’s.
I give him the benefit of a doubt. He may not himself have made the decision to honor the contemptible Mary Robinson, arguably a real bigot, with the Medal of Freedom. But, then, there is someone in his entourage who is leading him astray, gravely astray. And that someone has it in for Israel and for American Jews, too. The fact is that there is only so much that can be explained. …
…In the real world bestowing the Medal of Freedom on Mary Robinson is only important as a symbol. Take a look at the Medal of Freedom winners. There are many mediocre men and women on the list. But, overall, you will brim with pride, as the clichéd phrase puts it. Robinson had a commendable career as president of Ireland, mostly filled with symbolics, but important symbolics. It has been downhill ever since, a good deal of it in the gutter of anti-Semitism.
She was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when the commission began to specialize in the practice of supporting governmental repression and calling it freedom–as, frankly, Obama has done with the burqa, also in Cairo. But Robinson’s biggest role on the world stage was as chair of the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban. She planned it, she mostly ran it and she is responsible for that Witch’s Sabbath of hate against both Israel and America, actually the west and western values in general and in particular. Since then, she has been doing the time-consuming NGO thing, talking mostly to one another and soliciting grants from American foundations.
Robinson’s base in the world is the G-77 which has watched amiably as many of its member states increasingly preside over atrocities committed against their own inhabitants. Not much to honor here. …
Jennifer Rubin explains why the Obama administration’s ‘evenhandedness’ in the Middle East is a lie.
The Obama administration and its sycophantic spinners explain the dramatic shift in U.S. tone toward and treatment of Israel as an effort to be more “evenhanded” and to assume the role of “honest broker.” As events unfold, it becomes more apparent day by day that this is simply bunk. We are not seeing “evenhandedness” but one-sidedness. The only country receiving a daily barrage of public and private complaints and insults is Israel….
…And what about the hate-filled textbooks that remain in use in Saudi Arabia? Earlier this year, Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner implored Hillary Clinton to undertake a review of the books that, as Weiner explained, still teach ”young students that Jews should be killed, that Muslims who convert, question, or doubt Islam must repent or be killed, and that parents have the right to force their children into marriages against their will.” I don’t recall Obama or Clinton dragging in the Saudi ambassador to lecture him on the need to put a halt to this. …
The White House wants you to help out Big Brother by turning in anti-Obamacare e-mails. Debra J. Saunders has the story.
Imagine it’s four years ago and an aide to President George W. Bush posted a blog on the Whitehouse.gov Web site that bemoaned Internet criticism of the Iraq war, then continued: “These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain e-mails or through casual conversations.
Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an e-mail or see something on the Web about anti-war protests that seem fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”
Substitute the words “health insurance reform” for “anti-war protests,” and you get the exact wording of a blog posted by Macon Phillips, the White House director of new media, on Tuesday.
“I can only imagine the level of justifiable outrage had your predecessor asked Americans to forward e-mails critical of his politics to the White House,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, wrote in a letter to President Obama. “I suspect that you would have been leading the charge in condemning such a program.” …
Charles Krauthammer has a prescription for health care reform.
…1) Tort reform: As I wrote recently, our crazy system of casino malpractice suits results in massive and random settlements that raise everyone’s insurance premiums and creates an epidemic of defensive medicine that does no medical good, yet costs a fortune.
An authoritative Massachusetts Medical Society study found that five out of six doctors admitted they order tests, procedures and referrals — amounting to about 25 percent of the total — solely as protection from lawsuits. Defensive medicine, estimates the libertarian/conservative Pacific Research Institute, wastes more than $200 billion a year. Just half that sum could provide a $5,000 health insurance grant — $20,000 for a family of four — to the uninsured poor (U.S. citizens ineligible for other government health assistance). …
…(2) Real health-insurance reform: Tax employer-provided health-care benefits and return the money to the employee with a government check to buy his own medical insurance, just as he buys his own car or home insurance.
There is no logical reason to get health insurance through your employer. This entire system is an accident of World War II wage and price controls. It’s economically senseless. It makes people stay in jobs they hate, decreasing labor mobility and therefore overall productivity. And it needlessly increases the anxiety of losing your job by raising the additional specter of going bankrupt through illness. …
David Limbaugh explains one of the ways in which government intervention has increased the cost health insurance, and ironically suggests Obama’s push for health care run by the state, may mean some meaningful free market reforms.
…In her “The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care,” Sally Pipes documents that in 1979, there were only 252 mandate laws in force, but by 2007, there were 1,901. Many of these mandates, she notes — such as those pertaining to massage therapy, breast reduction and hair prosthesis — “are hardly critical components of a good health insurance policy.” But they exist, she says, because special interest groups have successfully lobbied state lawmakers to require all policies to cover them.
She provides a sampling of excessive state-mandated treatments that are covered, including: acupuncture, alcoholism treatment, athletic trainers, breast reduction, contraceptives, dieticians, drug abuse treatment, hair prosthesis, home health care, hormone replacement therapy, in vitro fertilization, marriage therapy, massage therapy, nature treatments, pastoral counseling, Port-stain elimination, professional counseling, smoking cessation, speech therapy and varicose vein removal.
When you force every insurance company to cover these things, you’re bound to drive up insurance costs. People who wouldn’t consider paying for these treatments themselves get them because they’re covered, thus increasing demand and prices. …
There is widespread belief Vitamin D and fish oil have health benefits, yet widespread research is not undertaken. John Calfee in The American.com explains why, and concludes it is a cautionary tale when contemplating health care “reform” that may eliminate profit motives in the drug field.
… it will be quite a while before we know what most want to know about vitamin D and fish oil. Research is proceeding very slowly on the most important front, the mounting of large-scale human trials necessary to provide definitive tests of the most essential hypotheses. These trials cost hundreds of millions of dollars to run, possibly even a few billion when one takes account of the difficulty of devising exactly the right kind of trials.
Just about everyone in the scientific community knows why research is moving so slowly on such important topics. There is no “intellectual property,” i.e., no one owns patents on substances like fish oil and vitamin D, which were discovered and isolated decades or more ago. But that should be no problem if government steps in to fill the gap. …
Hugo Lindgren has a novel economic indicator.
As if it wasn’t unpleasant enough, this recession comes with an info glut, all this economic data purporting to answer a simple question: Are things getting better? The answer is rarely straightforward. The numbers aren’t just confusing. They seem to be measuring some other planet.
In New York, we have our own economic indicators, often based on the degree to which people are being thwarted by the lack of opportunity. An old standby is the Overeducated Cabbie Index. The Squeegee Man Apparition Index is another good one. There’s also the Speed at Which Contractors Return Calls Index: within 24 hours, you’re in a recession; if they call you without prompting, that’s a depression.
The indicator I prefer is the Hot Waitress Index: The hotter the waitresses, the weaker the economy. In flush times, there is a robust market for hotness. Selling everything from condos to premium vodka is enhanced by proximity to pretty young people (of both sexes) who get paid for providing this service. That leaves more-punishing work, like waiting tables, to those with less striking genetic gifts. But not anymore. …
Debra Cassens Weiss says that Justice Thomas may be camping in a Wal-Mart parking lot near you.
If you see an RV in a Wal-Mart parking lot this summer, take a second look. One of the occupants could be U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Thomas’ wife, Ginni, told interviewers on a morning radio show called The Takeaway that she and her husband have traveled through 27 states in their recreational vehicle, and they love to stay in Wal-Mart parking lots.
“We have been in dozens of Wal-Mart parking lots throughout the country. Actually it’s one of our favorite things to do if we’re not having to plug in and we’ve got enough electricity and all that,” Ginni Thomas said, according to a transcript by the Wall Street Journal Law Blog. “But you can get a little shopping in, see part of real America. It’s fun!” …