Hewitt Blog

When your doctors, medics and relief supplies absolutely, positively have to get where they are needed. 

Here's Team Rubicon's blog from Haiti.  They need everything.

UPDATE: A great, detailed article on Team Rubicon.  There are thousands of Americans moving into Haiti to help the victims, and tens of thousands more providing support for their efforts.  The Team Rubicon story is emblematic of them all.

. 

My new Washington Examiner column is up.

The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto notes that "If Coakley came face to face with [Cheers' John] Ratzenberger, she would probably greet him with a sarcastic 'Hello, Newman.'" 

CNN's doctor-reporter stays at a hospital when the other doctors flee.  (HT: Instapundit.)

There are some updates on the ChildHope orphanage which I featured on last week's program.

I hope to connect with WorldConcern.org's disaster coordinator Merry Fitzpatrick, now in Haiti, for today's program.  Merry has previously been a guest from Sudan, and is dispatched by WorldConcern wherever the worst conditions arise. 

RealClearPolitics has the latest polls, all showing a Brown lead.

Pollster.com's Charles Franklin throws all the data on the table and concludes that Scott Brown has a "lead somewhere between 4 and 11 points." Powerline's Paul Mirengoff looks at the rising tide against Obamacare in Massachusetts and wonders how vast the opposition must be in the rest of America.

Mickey Kaus reports that a Brown victory will be followed by the House passage of the Senate bill, meaning that Bart Stupak and his pro-life allies really didn't mean it, and that the unions are stuck with the Cadillac tax. 

Byron York focuses on the issues driving Scott Brown's surge in Massachusetts. 

The Monday morning column from Clark Judge:

Four Words
By Clark S. Judge, managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc. ( www.whwg.com <http://www.whwg.com>  )
 
With the Democrats looking about to lose Ted Kennedy’s senate seat, a single line near the end of a front-page story in Sunday’s New York Times should send chills through the White House’s top echelons.
 
The story’s headline announces “Election Tests Staying Power of Democrats.”  Most of the focus is on why the Massachusetts race is slipping away.  Allowing for the Times’ bias, the reporter gets it right. Spending, taxes, deficits, government intrusion into the economy including the health overhaul: dismay at these policies among Independents nationally and in the Bay State is the cause of Mr. Obama’s dive in the polls and why the Democrats may drop Kennedy’s seat on Tuesday.  Surely by now these observations cannot come as news to anyone, but, then, the Times is playing catch up to The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, which have been on the case for months.
 
But the line that should unsettle the White House hints at emerging divisions in the most inside of inside Washington political teams.  It reads, “Still, some Democrats are wondering if Mr. Obama would be in a better position now if he had embraced a less ambitious health care proposal, as some aides urged….”

 Read More...

Comparing Martha Coakley to a box of rocks is unfair to the box, and the "Schilling is another Yankees fan" gaffe should persuade even the most ardent Democrat that Coakley is not one of the regular folks.  The lame attempt to pass Coakley's ignorance of the Red Sox legend off as a joke won't work either, as the Powerline transcript makes clear.  But the real reason for Democrats, Independents and Republicans to support Scott Brown is to kill off Obamacare.

Voters could indeed decide the fate of Obamacare in the Massachusetts senate election.  Barney Frank has declared that a Brown victory will kill the bill, another reason to contribute to Brown's campaign today.  As part of the debate, analysts and especially economists should begin to examine the unions' sweetheart deal that carves out their members' health care benefits from the burden of Obamacare's 40% excise tax on so-called "Cadillac plans." 

Not only does this carve-out outrageously treat nearly identically-situated Americans differently --same income, same health plan, but the union member is spared an enormous tax burden and the non-union member or his company pay it-- the impact of the exemption will be of far more consequence and a far greater advantage to organized labor than even the very controversial "card check" proposal.  Imagine the extraordinary advantage that will fall to companies like GM --already a government car company-- when it doesn't have to pay any of the tax but non-unionized car companies do have to pay it.  The same advantage will roll through the economy, with every unionized business benefitting and every non-union company in effect paying a premium for staying non-union.  Even long time opponents of unionization will have to reconsider their stance given the cost advantage now open to companies providing their health insurance through collective bargaining.

Democratic senators like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln and the so-called Blue Dogs in the House, already in deep trouble in their home states because of Obamacare's massive unpopularity, are now stuck supporting an enormous give-away to organized labor, one that penalizes every other citizen.  The Obama-Pelosi-Reid negotiators managed to take a very bad bill and make it far worse.

Pray that Brown wins and Barney Frank is right.  Obamacare is a disaster on many levels and it just got much worse.

I interviewed Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett on yesterday's program --the transcript is here.  Barnett is the author of The Pentagon's New Map and Great Powers, and he and his company devote a great deal of time and thought to third world development and disaster recovery.  If you are concerned with the aftermath of the earthquake and a long-lasting recovery for Haiti, read both books.

Finally, here are four organizations at work in Haiti today that could use your help:

ChildHope.org

BeyondBorders.net

The Haitian-American Friendship Foundation

WorldConcern.org

.

 

If she does want the job, you'd think she'd go at least one day during her last week of campaigning without making a colossal gaffe. By now, virtually everyone interested in this race has heard Ms. Coakley claim on radio in Massachusetts, a state rich in Irish Catholic heritage, that Catholics probably shouldn't work in ER's because their religious beliefs conflict with abortion law.

Today, she followed up that gem with another appearance on the Nightside program, hosted by Dan Rea.



Let me not mince words here. I detest the Red Sox. I am an Angels fan with a deep-seated dislike for the team from Boston. But I know exactly who Curt Schilling is, what an incredible pitcher he was, and what he meant to the Red Sox in 2004 when they made the most improbable run in the playoffs to win the World Series and remove the jinx of Babe Ruth for all time. I've been to Cooperstown and have seen the bloody sock enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Martha Coakley clearly has no idea who she is trying to represent. I'm sure if asked who Tom Brady is, she'd guess he was the youngest son on the Brady Bunch. Do you think if Bobby Orr came up and introduced himself to her, she'd ask for his support and the support of the rest of the Pittsburgh Penguins? Would she accuse Larry Bird of being a Lakers fan if she caught him speaking to Scott Brown in broad daylight?

www.brownforussenate.com, America. Don't reward ignorance. Get in touch with the campaign and ask how you can help make phone calls to get out the vote for Scott Brown this Tuesday.   
 

Listen to Democrat Martha Coakley display the stunning indifference to religious freedom that marks the extremist when it comes to the abortion issue.  The radio host Ken Pittman is pressing Coakley on the "right of conscience" provisions which the nation's bishops are this very weekend urging their parishioners to demand from Congress so that Catholic hospitals and Catholic health care professionals do not have to violate their faith and assist with abortion.  Coakley dismisses that concern, and in doing so, hopefully seals for the Catholics in Massachusetts that she has no time for their concerns or the concerns of their Church.  "You can have religious freedom," Coakley says, but "you probably shouldn't work in an emergency room."





On yesterday's program Mark Steyn noted Coakley's incredible lack of smarts, and it is painfully obvious in this exchange as it has been in many others that she is a very dim bulb, and an intolerant extremist to boot.  Barbara Boxer might be cheering Coakley on so that someone else finally wins the "dumbest senator" award, but will Massachusetts voters really send such an embarrassment to the U.S. Senate?

The late poll showing Scott Brown ahead in the Bay State was taken before this latest in a string of Coakley pratfalls.  Bill Clinton is flying in to try and resurrect Coakley's fortunes, but Massachusetts voters, while very liberal, aren't stupid, and they are increasingly likely to give Scott Brown a chance to represent Massachusetts while waiting for the democratic Party to give them a nominee who isn't an intemperate, intolerant clown.  Byron York provides some details on the emerging democratic spin on their incompetent candidate.

You can help Scott Brown with a late donation or with some volunteer efforts via his website here.

UPDATE FOR ANY MA VOTER STILL CONSIDERING MARTHA COAKLEY:

Really, if you are still even remotely thinking about voting for the spectacularly risible Coakley, read this very serious indictment of her abuse of her prosecutorial powers from the Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz.
 

Here are four experienced, effective Christian relief organizations at work in Haiti.

Here's the transcript of my conversation with Mark Steyn from Thursday's show which covers Haiti, the new book Game Change, and the Massachusetts senate race.

To help Scott Brown via a volunteer effort or a last minute donation, visit his website.

Visit theHughniverse to comment on the Haitian relief efforts.

Cadmium questions should be addressed to Liz McNulty.

And here's my review of Game Change:

“Game Change” by Mark Halperin and John Heilmann is an entertaining book. However, it could have a been a great one had the authors not decided merely to hint at and tiptoe around the biggest untold stories of President Obama’s long march to the presidency. It is hard to figure out why the authors went so soft on some aspects of the president’s biography and campaign when they relentlessly pilloried him on other character issues throughout the book. Perhaps the duo from central MSM-Lefty casting wanting to try and maintain some favor inside Team Obama by treading oh so lightly on the president’s most sensitive spots, but the collective impact of their thousands cuts at the president and his team nevertheless deliver a devastating impact in that it arrives from obvious friendlies interested in trying to make everyone involved in Campaign 2008 look very bad other than Obama.

Halperin and Heilmann use brass knuckles on everyone, but they tried –unsuccessfully-- not to leave many marks on Obama. The bloodiest pulp is John Edwards, and not far behind the at-one-point-feared-to-be-suicidal-by-his-staff candidate is his wife, “St. Elizabeth,” described this way by the authors: “an abusive, intrusive, paranoid condescending crazywoman." (p.127) And a shopping addict to boot, guilty of "filling her house with unopened boxes containing items she'd bought online." (p. 139).

 Read More...