Sensible conservatives have been waiting for the appearance of another Ronald Reagan-like figure on the national scene. We’re learning that he’s actually been here all along.

Objective history will identify Dick Cheney as a successful Congressman; Defense Secretary; Vice President; and — largely thanks to this speech — patriot and statesman (Update: President Obama’s speech follows Cheney’s; thus we can see later who history vindicates):

Thank you all very much, and Arthur, thank you for that introduction. It’s good to be back at AEI, where we have many friends. Lynne is one of your longtime scholars, and I’m looking forward to spending more time here myself as a returning trustee. What happened was, they were looking for a new member of the board of trustees, and they asked me to head up the search committee.

I first came to AEI after serving at the Pentagon, and departed only after a very interesting job offer came along. I had no expectation of returning to public life, but my career worked out a little differently. Those eight years as vice president were quite a journey, and during a time of big events and great decisions, I don’t think I missed much.

Being the first vice president who had also served as secretary of defense, naturally my duties tended toward national security. I focused on those challenges day to day, mostly free from the usual political distractions. I had the advantage of being a vice president content with the responsibilities I had, and going about my work with no higher ambition. Today, I’m an even freer man. Your kind invitation brings me here as a private citizen – a career in politics behind me, no elections to win or lose, and no favor to seek.

Chrysler’s bankruptcy, and what looks to be the impending bankruptcy of government-run General Motors, are getting ever more bizarre and outrageously expensive. Two pics will demonstrate.

First, there’s this from Reuters on Wednesday:

That’s more than likely at least $16 billion down the dumper taxpayers and future generations get to eat: $6 billion in secured debts assumed, minus their underlying asset value ($3 bil at most, I would estimate), plus “the bulk of” $15.4 billion in emergency “loans.”

The Reuters piece further notes that “The government is negotiating the terms on which it will assume GM’s secured debt and might make an …. offer to holders of the debt that is far superior to the one made to Chrysler LLC’s secured lenders.”

That’s precious. The New York Times portrayed Obama’s threatening hardball with Chrysler’s non-TARP secured first-lien creditors as a “lesson” for GM’s creditors — who appear to be on the verge of getting a far better deal. The “far superior” treatment of GM’s secured creditors, if it indeed comes to pass, shows that it’s the government that got schooled.

Speaking of schools, this will be good news for pension funds representing teachers and police in Indiana that have taken legal action objecting to the terms of the Chrysler bankruptcy that don’t give first-lien lenders their proper and legal due:

Richard Mourdock, Indiana’s treasurer, said in a statement (that) “The Indiana state funds suffered losses when the Obama administration overturned more than 100 years of established law by redefining ‘secured creditors’ to mean something less.”

They should be demanding at least what GM secured lenders are getting. The litigants are even moving to move the entire Chrysler bankruptcy matter out of bankruptcy court into federal district court “to deal with what they argue are constitutional issues.” It doesn’t seem likely that Chrysler will be emerging from bankruptcy on the Obama 60-day timeline. (Update, 11:30 pm.: The bankruptcy judge seems bound and determined to push the sale through before the Indiana litigants see if they can be heard in federal district. Update 2, 11:55 p.m.: But the left-for-dead Chrysler Financial and the terminated dealers are also lodging objections to the sale.)

Now imagine my surprise (no, not really; the fun never stops in the Obama-Geithner Industrial Complex) when I got this from CNNMoney.com in my e-mail yesterday evening:

Just another capital infusion down the drain, right? Well yes, but it’s more than that.

I think this infusion was necessary because of this story from two weeks ago:

Chase Terminates Chrysler Dealer Loans

One of our sources reports that Chase has just told Chrysler dealers that it will no longer loan them money to buy Chrysler products.

Chase has officially terminated the floorplanning of Chrysler vehicles. Given the freeze at CFC [Chrysler Finance], now nobody can buy cars. ….. the expected losses to the taxpayer are going to be through the roof.

“Floorplan” loans are made to dealers so they can stock cars on their lots and have them available for sale. GMAC became the lending arm for Chrysler when it filed for bankruptcy. The real message of the e-mail is that Chrysler was dead company if the government didn’t jump into the day-to-day floorplan lending business. How many other near-death experiences that only be avoided by pumping in more and more money await us (e.g. suppliers, utilities, contractors, etc.)?

If, as I expect, Chrysler’s sales continue to tank, and surviving dealers’ sales volumes even after the pruning go below their current levels, much of that $7.5 billion will be lost to write-offs.

The march towards the $100 billion in taxpayer losses predicted when President Bush sadly opened the floodgates after Congress wouldn’t continues.

All of this may yet have a happy ending for those who believe in free markets and, ultimately, human progress. Enough potential buyers to matter (and it doesn’t take that many) might recoil from all of this and refuse to buy GM and Chrysler vehicles, deciding that they would rather not be someday seen as willing accessories to creeping statism, or merely that they can’t trust government-run companies to make good products and back their promises. If that occurs, all of Dear Leader’s horses and all of his men won’t be able to put the companies back together again.

If the crack-up that becomes more likely with each passing day occurs, the one-word lesson for any other company or industry thinking about going for a government bailout will be there for all to see: Don’t.

Though there’s a long way to go, Life News provides three more examples beyond the Gallup poll I cited last week of a national trend towards respecting pre-born life (link to Rasmussen news story added by me; links to others were included in original):

The fourth poll released this month has confirmed a definite shift in American public opinion towards the pro-life perspective on abortion. A new Rasmussen Reports poll joins surveys from Gallup, Pew and Fox News in confirming that Americans are taking a decidedly more pro-life position on abortion.

The Rasmussen survey, released on May 5, asked a different question than the others and found that 58 percent of Americans say abortion is morally wrong most of the time. Just twenty-five percent disagree and the rest had no opinion.

The survey found women are more strongly pro-life than men as 64 percent of women believe most abortions are morally wrong, a view shared by just 51% of men.

Of those who identified themselves as pro-life, 88 percent say most abortions are morally wrong as do 29 percent of those who call themselves pro-choice.

Meanwhile, another Rasmussen survey question found a majority of Americans, 52 percent, think it is too easy to get an abortion in America. That’s up seven percent from two years ago when 45 percent thought it was too easy.

Just 13 percent now say it’s too hard to get an abortion, while 21 percent believe the current availability is about right.

Most Republicans (68%) and adults not affiliated with either major party (52%) say abortion is too easy in this country. Among Democrats, 37 percent say it’s too easy, 17 percent too hard and 27 percent about right.

Some 84 percent of pro-life Americans think it’s too easy to get an abortion and even 20 percent of “pro-choice” adults agree. A plurality of those who are pro-choice say the level of difficulty involved is about right. Surprisingly, only approximately one-third of those who call themselves pro-choice say abortions are too difficult to obtain. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

Or give him away or something…

Ya know, if Michael Steele thinks that those of us who once called ourselves Republicans are going to blindly follow him like the leftist robots follow their Obamessaih, then he’s in for a rude awakening.  This article by Carl Cameron proves that Steele is STILL following the same, tired, old strategy that has failed every time it’s tried (reaching out to the left before securing your own base namely by talking out both sides of your mouth).  Here are some excerpts…

Steele, in an interview with FOX News, said he’s calling on his party to unite around core values.

“We’ve got to coalesce around some core ideas and a core vision for this party, which is what I’m laying out this week, and we’re going to move forward,” he said. “And so, you know, I’ll either win you over or I won’t. I don’t have time to stop and really figure that out for you.”

Uh, which “core ideas” Michael?  Big government?  Advice:  A party who tries to pretend to be something it’s not (all things to all people) has no “core beliefs.”

And now the new RNC chairman is wading into the GOP debate over whether the party should moderate or remain ardently conservative.

“This is a no-brainer,” Steele told FOX News. “I’m a student of multiplication and addition, and not subtraction and division. My focus is on building a party that reaches across the board.”

Sigh.  Michael, read this v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w-l-y because obviously you people haven’t been paying attention: You will lose (and have lost) every time you try to pander for moderate/democrat votes as a Republican.

“I want a party that speaks to people. The idea that we only narrowly speak to one segment of the population is boneheaded and it’s not reflective of the history of this party,” Steele said. “How is kicking Colin Powell out or kicking Dick Cheney out or Rush Limbaugh in going to feed a child who’s hungry tonight?”

You’ve got to be kidding me…there’s only one bonehead in this scenario and you have to look at him everyday in the mirror.  I guess throwing your base under the bus is considered what?  Strategic?  Vogue?  So YOU want a moderate pile of mush (good luck accomlishing anything), let me tell you what most of us outside your precious beltway want…

WE want a party that actively works to secure the rights set forth in our founding documents.  (That would be Life, Lib- well, realistically, all the other rights are moot if we do not secure EVERY citizen’s right to Life (oops).

WE want a party that actively works to to get us away from income-based taxation.

WE want a party that actively works to obtain educational freedom (vouchers) for ALL of our children.

WE want a party that actively works to cut every bit of the ridiculous spending of our tax dollars on things NOT authorized by the Constitution.

WE want a party who actively works to LIMIT the structure and scope of government (Ibid.).

WE want a party who actively works to recognize and reward American exceptionalism.

WE want a party who attracts Independents & Zel Miller Democrats by simply and admirably standing on and fighting for these proven, successful, core beliefs.

YOU wanted to be the “leader” Michael and in light of the fact that the best, most effective leaders are at their core, true servants, it is time that you decide…decide exactly who it is that you will serve.  Will it be the current administration (“oh brother“) and its second cousins made up of progressive, unreliable Republicans?  Or will you serve those who continue to stand strong on the founding principles of the Republican Party and are SOLELY responsible for ANY success that it has enjoyed in the past (you know, the people who knock on your beloved moderates’ doors and drag them to the polls)?

Choose carefully, Michael…you cannot chase two rabbits and have Hossefeffer for dinner; and your decision will very likely decide the fate of the Republican Party:  It’s vibrant rebirth or continued free-fall into irrelevancy.

On May 15, I posted (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) on the Obama administration’s and government-run Chrysler’s blatant deception concerning whether plants would be closed as a result of the company’s bankruptcy filing.

Specifically, on April 29 and 30, Obama, the administration and Chrysler told senators, congressmen, state and local politicians, and local and regional union leaders that the bankruptcy (these are Obama’s words) “will not disrupt the lives of the people who work at Chrysler or the communities that depend on it.” Those who heard this and other reassurances reasonably concluded that no plants would be permanently closed. But on May 1, government-run Chrysler announced that it would close plants in Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Days later, hundreds of Chrysler dealers were terminated.

The national media establishment has treated all of this as a non-story, so I expect it will do the same with this update from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It includes news that two Ohio congressmen, one Democrat and one Republican, are demanding documents relating to the who, what, where, when, and why of the plant-closing decisions:

WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve LaTourette today introduced legislation that demands the White House better explain why it painted a positive portrait of Chrysler’s future for all communities, only to be contradicted hours later with news of plant closings.

“Many people feel misled by this entire process,” said LaTourette, who with other Congress members, governors and mayors believed from President Barack Obama’s April 30 announcement that no permanent plant closings were planned.

Obama that day announced a short-term Chapter 11 bankruptcy for Chrysler in exchange for government aid, saying, “It will not disrupt the lives of the people who work at Chrysler or live in communities that depend on it.”

Obama, his automotive task force and Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli that day separately described some temporary steps needed to restructure the automaker and help it merge with Italian car maker Fiat. None of the parties mentioned permanent plant closings. Twinsburg officials, as well as those in other locations, only learned a day later that the thick bankruptcy filing contained plans to permanently shutter five Chrysler factories, including the Twinsburg Stamping Plant.

Reacting to outrage from LaTourette and others, Nardelli soon apologized. But LaTourette is not satisfied.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a Cleveland Democrat, already has demanded further information from Chrysler, including any transcripts of conference calls between the company and public officials, and he left open the possibility of demanding the same from the White House. LaTourette, a Bainbridge Township Republican, is not waiting for that possibility.

He introduced legislation today demanding that the administration provide all information it has regarding the closing of Chrysler plants and 789 dealerships nationwide. If successful, his resolution would force the White House to provide all documents, records and communications regarding scheduled Chrysler plant closings that were not divulged by the administration or Chrysler until the plant names appeared in a bankruptcy filing, LaTourette’s office said.

…. Just days before the bankruptcy filing, the local United Auto Workers union had approved a new contract made in order to keep the 1,250-worker Twinsburg plant open. Union members approved it by an 88 percent margin, LaTourette noted.

“I don’t think it’s logical that you’d vote by an 88 percent margin to kill your job and close your plant,” LaTourette said. “There’s nothing more disruptive to a community than losing its largest employer. If this was the plan all along, fine, but I believe it was intentionally kept from key stakeholders and that’s not right.”

Plain Dealer Washington Bureau Stephen Koff, who has been virtually alone in covering this story, notes that LaTourette’s resolution has eight Republican co-sponsors.

The only reason that LaTourette’s move would not be considered newsworthy is that the congressman would appear to have little chance of success in getting anything out of Obama or the White House, despite the President’s all too familiar and now all too often broken promises of “transparency.” But the possibility of a resolution’s success has seldom stopped the national press from trumpeting such actions if taken by just about any Democrat or “growing in office” Republican if they happen to represent negative press for a conservative president or governor.

The fact remains that Obama really lied, and jobs really died — and union jobs to boot.

That is news, regardless of whether the national media establishment chooses to report it.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It’s here.

I will post it here at BizzyBlog on Saturday morning (link won’t work until then) when the blackout expires.

____________________________________________

RELATED: The column deals with Obama’s certified, super-sized, honest-to-goodness lies and the Bush administration’s lack thereof.

Karl Rove enters a different frontier in his Wall Street Journal column today with a comparison of specific, unambiguous Obama campaign promises and presidential actions (except the third item, which is more current). Items he notes that represent undeniable betrayals of his far-left base include –

…..President Obama kept George W. Bush’s military tribunals for terror detainees after calling them an “enormous failure” and a “legal black hole.” His campaign claimed last summer that “court systems . . . are capable of convicting terrorists.” Upon entering office, he found out they aren’t.

He insisted in an interview with NBC in 2007 that Congress mandate “consequences” for “a failure to meet various benchmarks and milestones” on aid to Iraq. Earlier this month he fought off legislatively mandated benchmarks in the $97 billion funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama agreed on April 23 to American Civil Liberties Union demands to release investigative photos of detainee abuse. Now’s he reversed himself. Pentagon officials apparently convinced him that releasing the photos would increase the risk to U.S. troops and civilian personnel.

Throughout his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama excoriated Mr. Bush’s counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, insisting it could not succeed. Earlier this year, facing increasing violence in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama rejected warnings of a “quagmire” and ordered more troops to that country. He isn’t calling it a “surge” but that’s what it is. He is applying in Afghanistan the counterinsurgency strategy Mr. Bush used in Iraq.

As a candidate, Mr. Obama promised to end the Iraq war by withdrawing all troops by March 2009. As president, he set a slower pace of drawdown. He has also said he will leave as many as 50,000 Americans troops there.

Rove’s summary of the above is that:

…. Mr. Obama’s appealing campaign images turned out to have been fleeting. He ran hard to the left on national security to win the nomination, only to discover the campaign commitments he made were shallow and at odds with America’s security interests.

…. Mr. Obama either had very little grasp of what governing would involve or, if he did, he used words meant to mislead the public.

It’s quite a lot of both, Karl.

From Greenland, Michigan and Marshfield, Wisconsin:

May 16, 2009

Brian and Shannon Kin had two choices. They could begin a risky pediatric drug trial with a new medication for their infant daughter or wait to see if little Hailee would be among the 50 percent of children with rare metabolic disorder who live past their first birthday.

Either way, their daughter could die.

Hailee was born a normal baby, but in her second month, her parents started to notice something wasn’t right. She had gained only about 12 ounces since birth, and she had trouble breathing, Shannon said.

“She didn’t seem to be growing,” she said. “I was nervous.”

The family, from Greenland, Mich., was referred to Marshfield Clinic to figure out what was wrong.

Numerous tests showed Hailee had a rare disease called infantile hypophosphatasia, a fatal disorder that made it extremely difficult for Hailee’s bones to grow. It has no known cure or treatment.

The doctor “said there’s nothing out there that you can do right now, and that 50 percent of kids die and 50 percent survive,” Shannon said. “So he left us with that and we were just hysterical. We couldn’t believe it.”

That was about five months ago. Today, Hailee has completed a clinical trial at St. Vincent Hospital for a new drug called Enobia. In Hailee’s case, it has proven to be a major breakthrough in treatment for the disease, said Dr. Terence Edgar, chairman of neurology at Prevea Health.

“It’s been highly successful,” he said. “It’s been beyond our wildest dreams. Six patients have been getting this treatment in the world, and Hailee is the most dramatic. She was probably the sickest of the bunch.”

Hailee is doing well today and is all smiles at her regular visits to St. Vincent. It’s a long way from where she started. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

From the ‘Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide’ Dept. — Here’s a CNN e-mail alert I just received:

There is no George W. Bush to kick around any more.

I blame Obama and his congressional cohort.

(*) – As Normal People Define It.

__________________________________________________

UPDATE: So how did the Associated Press’s Jeannine Aversa report the above raw news? As you would expect an Obama apparatchik to do it (reproduced in full as it existed at 3:15 p.m.; bold after title is mine):

Fed sees hopeful signs but downgrades ’09 forecast

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve expects the economy to improve in coming months, even as policymakers have downgraded their outlook for all of 2009.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues believe business sales and factory production will begin to gradually recover later this year as President Barack Obama’s stimulus package and the Fed’s aggressive efforts to end the recession take hold. In new Fed documents, they also pointed to signs that the recession’s grip was easing in the current quarter.

The Fed now expects the economy will shrink this year between 1.3 and 2 percent. The old forecast called for a contraction between 0.5 and 1.3 percent. The unemployment rate may hit nearly 10 percent, up from 8.8 percent in the old forecast.

Here’s a “little” math problem, Jeannine: The economy has already shrunk 1.56% (the first quarter’s preliminary annualized -6.1% expressed on a pure quarter-over-quarter basis). That means, according to the Fed, that the economy will shrink or grow by a teeny-tiny amount (a quarter over quarter average of at most +0.08% or -0.14%) during the rest of the year. All this will occur while the nation’s population continues to grow, meaning that the Fed’s prediction is for a slight reduction in per-capita GDP even if its best-case scenario comes true. That is, the average person will be worse off at the end of the year than they were on March 31.

And what’s this nonsense about “President Barack Obama’s stimulus package …. tak(ing) hold”?

I thought the stimulus legislation had to be enacted immediately to prevent the economy from going in the tank. Why, it was soooooo urgent that nobody even had the time to read it before they voted. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown even had to fly in on a government plane from his mother’s funeral to cast the deciding vote.

What happened? Three months later, the economy’s in the tank and the “stimulus” hasn’t taken hold.

The vast majority of “stimulus” payments thus far has been transfer payments, which, whatever their alleged benefits, do not stimulate economic recovery or growth.

Meaningful tax cuts would have “taken hold” and actually stimulated the economy by now, and could have been made retroactive to January 1 — and I’m not talking about the Obama cut that the vast majority of Americans have said is making no noticeable difference in their lives. Only nine percent say it’s made a big difference, “fifty-eight percent say no difference, and the others don’t know.”

But to Jeannine Aversa, the “hopeful signs” are more important that the belief stated by the Fed that the economy will be worse than it originally thought.

Cross-posted in revised form at NewsBusters.org.

Each of the Big 3 networks’ evening news broadcasts is pulling an historically low audience, or close to it — and it isn’t even summertime yet.

While they continue to pretend that Obamamania is as alive and well as it allegedly was in January, they have seen 25% of their viewers go elsewhere, including one-third of the 25-54 demographic.

Year over year, they’re down a collective 6% overall, and a stunning 10% in the 25-54 demo, which now consists of less than 6 million pairs of eyes. Test patterns might be able to outperform that.

Here is the latest chart showing the post-Jan. 26 skids:

Almost three years ago, in July 2006, Drudge headlined “TV’s Lowest Week,” which linked to a wire story about how network TV in general, including the evening news shows, had just endured their worst week for total audience since the boob tube became widely used in households. That wire story said that:

“World News Tonight” averaged 7.3 million viewers and “Nightly News” had 7.2 million (both 5.1 rating, 11 share). The “CBS Evening News” averaged 6.5 million viewers (4.6, 10).

As you can see above, the combined audience for the week of May 11, 2009 was over a half-million lower that early July 2006′s 21 million (7.3 + 7.2 +6.5).

And as I said, it isn’t even summertime yet.

ABC, at 7.14 million is already lower than it was during the summer of 2006. I guess that selectively edited Charles Gibson hatchet job on Sarah Palin didn’t have any long-term effect. Sorry, Charlie.

This will never happen, but if the nets continue to lose evening news audience at the same rate as they have since January 26, no one will be watching them by next March or April. Sadly, we won’t be that lucky.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

____________________________________________________

UPDATE: A BizzyBlog flashback from July 2005 explains why Brian, Charlie, and Katie will stay in front of their mics until the repo guys take them away (slightly revised from original) –

The business point here is that there is nothing that will put a stop to this nonsense on the horizon:

• The audience for the Big Three network nightly news shows continues to decline.
• The decline is steepest among the most desirable demographic groups.
• All three nightly broadcasts most likely lose money, when isolated from their morning counterparts (Today, Good Morning America, CBS Morning Show) and their documentary shows (Dateline, 60 Minutes, 20/20, etc.). At a minimum, none makes an acceptable level of profit.
• The news operations of each of the Big 3 networks are very small parts of very large organizations (CBS, NBC-GE, and ABC-Disney), so small that apparently no one at any of the three parent companies cares enough to do anything about the continued hemorrhaging in the nightly new shows, as long as the news operations themselves are profitable.
• So because those other parts of the news operations make money, the nightly news programs can chug right along, oblivous to normal profitability expectations.
• The journalists who put together the nightly news programs could care less if the broadcasts are profitable. It’s obvious that their agenda is more important.
• Because of all of the above, the ever-shrinking audience for these broadcasts can expect to be spoon-fed biased reporting, Bush bashing, and conservative-bashing for the foreseeable future.

Really (HT Hot Air).

As noted by yours truly in April 2008 and August 2008, George W. Bush never got the credit he deserved for the very real accomplishments of his AIDS initiative.

The press recoiled at the idea that it used the ABC approach — “Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms” — and continually lied about how much funding was devoted to abstinence (it was about 7%, not a third, as was repeatedly reported).

The press also doesn’t seem to like the fact that the ABC model “is now recognized as the most effective strategy to prevent HIV in generalized epidemics.” This would explain why Bush, in a February 2008 visit to Africa, was given a hero’s welcome.

The April 2008 post shows a total fiscal 2008 budget of $3.1 billion for PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which would seem to indicate that Obama’s “$3.3 billion shortfall” represents a complete elimination of the program.

My guesses are that:

• Obama plans, after the passage of a few months, to initiate a program with no legacy relationship to PEPFAR (wouldn’t want any association with the eeeeeevil Bush, y’know; this Hot Air commenter agrees).
• The plan won’t include abstinence education.
• The press will rain down hosannas on Benevolent Dear Leader Obama when he comes out with it.

Snark question: Is Jeremiah Wright, who “believes that AIDs was created by the government of the United States,” available for comment?

Exit question: Isn’t it racist to assume, as the condoms uber alles crowd apparently does, that black Africans are incapable of exercising sexual self-restraint?

From Richmond, Indiana:

May 18, 2009

After debilitating blood clot, woman earns nursing degree

Sixteen-year-old Katie Kirk of Richmond laid down to sleep it off. Three hours later, her mother couldn’t wake her.

A CT scan at Reid Hospital showed a large blood clot in her brain. She was taken by helicopter to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.

Within hours, Kirk had surgery to remove the clot, which was as big as a golf ball.

She had suffered a spontaneous arteriovenous malformation causing a cluster of capillaries in her brain to erupt into a blood clot.

A month later, Kirk was back in surgery to remove the clot-causing spontaneous arteriovenous malformation.

Afterward, a test of her writing and math skills put her at a fourth-grade level.

Since then, Kirk has had to relearn how to learn. Some days, she felt like giving up.

However, Kirk persevered. She defied the odds, and with the help of tutors and teachers for the homebound, she was able to graduate from Richmond High School on time in 2004 and just a week ago, the now 23-year-old graduated from Ball State University with a degree in nursing.

“I was overwhelmed,” Kirk said. “I couldn’t believe that I was up there on that stage getting ready to get my nursing pin.”

Kirk’s mother, Pam Kirk, said, “I was so happy for her. I thought I would cry but I didn’t.”

“It just was an absolute miracle,” said Kirk’s father, Randy Kirk.

Kirk’s achievement of a nursing degree is something her doctors didn’t think was possible.

“During my whole recovery phase, I saw many people, many doctors,” Kirk said. “They’d ask, ‘What are your plans?’ I’d say, ‘I’m going into nursing.’ After knowing what I’d been through, there’d be a look of concern. … ‘That’s a great big dream you’ve got. That might be a difficult dream for you to attain.’”

“Katie just refused to accept that,” Randy Kirk said.

Memorization problems, in particular, were forecast to be a possible deterrent.

“She was determined to rebuild those pathways and she did. It’s just incredible,” said Pam Kirk, a physical education teacher at Charles Elementary School. “I think of myself as a hard worker, but I don’t think I could hold a candle to my daughter.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

Nortin Hader, M.D. is a “professor of medicine and microbiology/immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an attending rheumatologist at University of North Carolina Hospitals.”

He also thinks that a number of procedures commonly thought of as beneficial have no or very minimal benefit.

The fact that ABC is carrying Hader’s exhortations may be a clue that the network is in the tank for anything that would appear to promote government intervention in the medical system. That appears to be where Hader is ultimately going.

Judge for yourself when you see the list of procedures Hader believes are either not beneficial, or are very minimally so:

We all know about medical malpractice. That is when a physician does something necessary but does it inexcusably poorly. I call that Type I Medical Malpractice.

Type II Medical Malpractice is when a physician or surgeon does the unnecessary, even if it’s done well. Type II Medical Malpractice is a scourge in America.

We’re in for a shock if we ask if there is either no evidence for benefit, or when there’s evidence for benefit, is the benefit is too trivial to care about. Here’s a partial listing of tests and procedures that, in my opinion, we must re-examine:

1) Oral hypoglycemic drugs for Type 2 Diabetes do not spare one from heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, skin ulcers or anything else you might care about, including death before your time.

2) If you think coronary artery bypass surgery or angioplasty with or without stents can save your life or improve your angina, think again.

3) No one should submit to a screening test unless: the test is accurate, the disease is important and we can do something about the disease. Screening mammography, PSA, HbA1c and cholesterol all fail by at least one criteria.

4) The argument that arthroscopic surgery for your knee will do something good for you in the short or long term is an example of the power of belief over science.

5) Anyone who thinks that any form of surgery can benefit isolated low back pain has been fooled.

6) Any well woman who thinks treating a low bone mineral density will result in anything meaningful for them has been sold another old wives’ tale. Since this is so, bone mineral density screening of well women is foolish.

And that’s just for starters. The menu of Type II Medical Malpractice is long, high-priced, counter-intuitive, and incontrovertible.

It is outrageous that we Americans are asked to share the cost of providing this for each other. Refusing to do so is the rallying cry for rational health care reform, and it’s long overdue.

ESPN and other sports outlets must be in on the conspiracy relating to Item 4, arthroscopic surgery. The parade of athletes whose careers were interrupted by serious knee injuries, but then extended by arthroscopic surgery, is surely too long to enumerate here. Hader wants us to believe that they’ve all been duped. Or is the benefit of continuing to be able to play sports “too trivial to care about”?

The idea that bypass surgery and angioplasty are totally unnecessary also seems particularly suspect, especially given that many of these procedures are done when a patient is near death.

Mammograms a waste of time? I suppose women aren’t supposed to worry about breast cancer until it’s too late to treat it.

Something’s not right about Hader’s stridency, and it may have something to do with an organization that he champions. “The Cochrane Collaboration” claims to be “The reliable source of evidence in health care,” and prides itself on not accepting “conflicted funding.” By making such a claim, it flogs the deeply mistaken belief that commercial donations are evil, and donations from governments, government-affiliated, and government-dependent organizations are pure as the driven snow.

Cochrane’s contributors would seem to lean towards favoring state-run healthcare. The organization’s agenda has a distinct Luddite, anti-progress, anti-technology aroma that is particularly off-putting. Dr. Hader’s outrage that “we Americans are asked to share the cost of providing this for each other” tells me that if were in charge of a state-run system, he’d be denying a lot of procedures he considers unnecessary. I suspect that patients who would like to stay alive or who would like an improved quality of life would take issue with his conclusions.

Oh wait — I just described the UK’s National Health Service.

At a minimum, ABC should have provided a rebuttal opportunity. As it is, commenters at the article have done a pretty good job of that on their own. One of the better ones was this:

Seriously? If we’re supposed to suddenly believe this doctor that these 6 things are foolish, the maybe he should have spent some time explaining the “why”s to us instead of blowing hot air. He only listed the procedures- he did not bother to point out what it is about them that makes them so foolish. Personally, I’m glad my grandfathers doctor found bypass surgery to not be pointless, or christmas of ’07 would have been spent burying him, not bringing him home from the hospital.

The lack of any evidence from Hader is indeed odd coming from someone who touts an organization that supposedly prides itself on being “evidence-based.”

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.