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THIS WEEK'S
Football Predictions
(I bet you are thrilled!)
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NOTHING TODAY
I'm Too Depressed
Over my poor performance in my football predictions
And ... I really ain't looking forward to "Monday Night Commercials" again!!
"ILLEGAL ALIENS WILL NOT RECEIVE
Health Care Benefits"
Obama ... over and over again!
Then what is happening here?
LIBERALS SEEK HEALTH-CARE ACCESS FOR ILLEGALS
Fearful that they're losing ground on immigration and health care, a group of House Democrats is pushing back and arguing that any health care bill should extend to all legal immigrants and allow illegal immigrants some access.
The Democrats, trying to stiffen their party's spines on the contentious issue, say it's unfair to bar illegal immigrants from paying their own way in a government-sponsored exchange. Legal immigrants, they say, regardless of how long they've been in the United States, should be able to get government-subsidized health care if they meet the other eligibility requirements.
"Legal permanent residents should be able to purchase their plans, and they should also be eligible for subsidies if they need it. Undocumented, if they can afford it, should be able to buy their own private plans. It keeps them out of the emergency room," said Rep. Michael M. Honda, California Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.
Mr. Honda was joined by more than 20 of his colleagues in two letters laying out the demands.
Coverage for immigrants is one of the thorniest issues in the health care debate, and one many Democratic leaders would like to avoid. But immigrant rights groups and the Democrats who sent the letters say they have to take a stand now.
Obama has said he does not want health care proposals to cover illegal immigrants. The bill drawn up by Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, excludes illegal immigrants from his proposed health care exchange.
Mr. Honda and his allies, though, say illegal immigrants should be allowed to pay for insurance if they can afford it, even if it comes through a government-established exchange. As a generally young, healthy part of the population, illegal immigrants could help reduce overall costs for those who buy into health exchange plans, the lawmakers said.
The Democrats' letters, however, do not issue ultimatums or threaten to withhold support for the bills if their requests aren't met.
The National Council of La Raza launched its own "flood their voice mail" campaign last week to put pressure on Mr. Baucus to expand coverage in his proposal to include all legal immigrants and to drop verification language in the legislation that would prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining coverage.
Mr. Honda told The Washington Times that he's not pushing for illegal immigrants to gain access to taxpayer-subsidized benefits. "That's an argument that's been done already," he said.
Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, said proposals that include government coverage for illegal immigrants leave him incredulous.
"If anybody can, with a straight face, advocate that we should provide health insurance for people who broke into our country, broke our law and for the most part are criminals, I don't know where they ever would draw the line," he said.
Mr. King, who opposes Democrats' health care plans in general, said illegal immigrant access in legislation "would be a poison pill that would cause health care to go down" to defeat.
Twenty-nine Democrats signed on to the letter on legal immigrants, while 21 signed the letter on covering illegal immigrants. Although the leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus signed the legal-immigrant letter in their capacity as CBC officials, they signed the other letter as individual members of Congress.
Under the 1996 welfare law overhaul, Congress restricted most federal benefits to longtime holders of green cards - those who have been in the country at least five years.
But Democrats chipped away at that rule when they reauthorized the State Children's Health Insurance Program earlier this year and allowed states to cover all immigrant children and pregnant women, regardless of how long they've been in the country.
In their letter, the Democrats said health care costs are much lower for legal immigrants than for native citizens.
"Immigrants are part of our families, our communities, our economy, and contribute to the fabric of America," they wrote. "It is simply wrong that their taxes would pay for public health insurance programs to which they are not allowed access."
10 PIECES OF ADVICE TO BE PASSED ON
1. Don't imagine you can change a man - unless he's in diapers.
2. What do you do if your boyfriend walks out? You shut the door.
3. If they can put a man on the moon - they should be able to put them all up there.
4. Go for the younger man. You might as well, they never mature anyway.
5. Men are all the same - they just have different faces, so we can tell them apart.
6. Best way to get a man to do something is to suggest he is too old for it.
7. Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener.
8. The children of Israel wandered around the desert for 40 years. Even in Biblical times, men wouldn't ask for directions.
9. If he asks what sort of books you're interested in, tell him check books.
10. Remember a sense of humor does not mean that you tell him jokes, it means that you laugh at his.
NEMONT.NET
I called nemont to see if I could get a faster package on my DSL ... and they told me I have the fastest "residential" package, but if I have a "business name" I can get a business package...
So I asked how much it would cost...
I am now paying $95 a month for phone and DSL of 1.0 mbps down and 512 kbps up; for $85 a month I can get a "business package" for phone and DSL at 1.5 mbps down and 1.0 mbps up!
So for $10 a month less I get a 50% increase in my bandwidth!
I told her to do it ... (why they didn't tell me this when I first signed-up I'll be damned if I know...)
TIME TO SAY GOODBYE TO THE UNITED NATIONS
It was all I could do to keep from pulling an Elvis and shooting out the screen of my TV this week to see the tag-team of terrorist dictators come to the podium of the United Nations to spout their lunacy.
Muammar Qaddafi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez all were given stage time as if they were legitimate leaders of civil governments. They are murdering thugs and despicable despots. Their raging rants were bad enough, but it was made worse by the fact that U.S. taxpayers like you and me are paying for a big chunk of it.
The United States pays 22 percent of the total operating budget of the United Nations and 27 percent of the peacekeeping mission. In all, we contribute over $5 billion a year directly to this bloated bureaucracy that doesn't have the courage to call out members who violate human rights at will, pollute and exploit the planet, engage in terror, or who trample the rights of its women and subjugate them to the status of yard animals.
The concept of a community of nations gathering in a forum to discuss mutual concerns and seeking to bring peaceful solutions to troubled areas was a noble one. The ideas to help foster relief and aid to nations in crisis is likewise worthy. But the United Nations has become the international version of ACORN, with a culture of corruption and cowardice that takes American money by the fistful and then uses its fists to beat us over the head with criticism.
Enough!
Get the jackhammers and cut it loose from the edge of the East River and float the entire block of concrete to any nation willing to put up with its collection of spoiled diplomats and willing to pay for the care and upkeep like we have. We can send a couple of people over to wherever it decides to locate to listen, but let other nations pay the freight.
I'm tired of the America bashing, whether from punk nations that use the microphones we pay for to trash us or from our own president, who needs to stop apologizing for his perception of our excesses and start acknowledging our exceptionalism.
I know that in the grand scheme of a federal budget of trillions of dollars, $5 billion might seem like chump change, but that's real money that isn't really helping Americans put food on their tables and providing jobs for our families.
So if the U.N. is going to continue to be a forum for fruits, nuts, and flakes, let them fill the bowl somewhere else. I'm sure the diplomats would love the Saudi summers, sucking up the sand or maybe in Teheran, where Ahmadinejad can talk all day and won't even have to travel.
THESE ARE YOUR PEOPLE, OBAMA!
Below is a picture of three of four "poor Chicago misunderstood" youths.
Why is their picture here?
Because these four beat to death a 16-year-old honor student simply because he was walking to a bus stop after school!
With railroad ties!!
Yes, Obama, you and ACORN and all your other buddies sure did help Chicago ... and now you really want us to believe you are going to help America?
Do the honorable thing and resign!!
NOW...
OBAMA'S WELL ORGANIZED COMMUNITY IS FALLING APART:
Obama Has Now Become A Noose
Around the neck of every American Democrat!
It's now official: The average American is not as stupid as Washington DC Democrats and their international leftist friends thought.
Their mystery messiah has already gone from hero to zero after only seven months in power, and Obama has now become a noose around the neck of every American Democrat, and every international fascist who "hoped" Obama could usher in Marxist "change."
Nobody can organize a community like a good old fashioned communist thug can. It worked long enough to put a mystery man in the Oval Office, thanks to international socialists working through CPUSA - SPUSA and DSAUSA, funded by literally hundreds of leftist front-groups operating as special interest 527 organizations. Here's a short list of the BIGGEST leftist front groups:
AFL-CIO
America Coming Together
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees
EMILY's List
Joint Victory Campaign 2004
League of Conservation Voters.
Media Fund
MoveOn.org
New Democrat Network
Service Employees International Union
Sierra Club
Who spends an obscene $1 billion dollars to win a lousy $400,000 per year job, and why? The people behind Obama expect a return on their investment. And they are NOT the kind of folks you want to disappoint: These folks make Capone look like a choir boy.
Before the ink was dry on Obama's fake Certification of Live Birth (not to be confused with an actual birth certificate), Obamanation was off to confiscate control of banking, insurance, energy and auto manufacturing. Before they knew what was happening, the American people woke up, the proud new owners of Government Motors and $13 Trillion in debt.
But it wasn't until Obamanation tried to confiscate control of 1/7th of the US economy by nationalizing the private American health care industry that the people took to the streets in protest.
On the heels of dozens of angry Town Hall meetings turned public tar-and-feathering parties for countless career DC bureaucrats, Obama and his Democrat partners in crime found themselves in a historic freefall from popularity among average American taxpayers. Eight months into office, Obama has bounced Jimmy Carter from his famous position as America 's worst president.
The people behind the puppet in our Oval Office did what leftists always do. They over-estimated themselves, under-estimated the American people, and over-played their hand. They actually thought that Americans would sit quiet as unbridled leftists trampled all over 300 million Americans.
That was the good news. As Obama becomes an anvil chained around the neck of DC and international leftists, he becomes a liability to their agenda. These folks have an interesting way of dealing with political liabilities.
Losing control of their agenda and, in a power-slide towards the bottomless pit of political has-beens, Democrats are desperate to keep their international friends at bay. But at the same time, being career politicians always focused on self-preservation; they must find a way to get re-elected by people ready to lynch them in Public Square .
Obama has foolishly allowed himself to be pushed into a no-win position, in his unlikely quest to "make history" by becoming the first "black" mystery messiah allowed to sit at the big desk with his finger on the red button. In short, he's in way over his head, just as many worried would be the case with a freshman politician complete with blank resume. Nancy "crazy as an out-house rat" Pelosi is no help, and Harry Reid is headed for the political boneyard no matter what.
Teddy Kennedy was in no position to lead the young lad out of the woods, and wannabes like Chucky Schumer and Bawny Fwank will soon be looking for an escape hatch of their own. Time to Bring in the Heavy Artillery and Circle the Wagons.
Since Obama just won't become the "transparent president" he tricked so many voters into voting for, the issue of his constitutional conflict won't go away. $1.35 million in legal defense fees later, the demand to see proof that he passes Article II requirements is getting louder.
Despite around the clock media efforts to paint every constitutionally conscious American a "right-wing racist Timothy McVeigh," the people seem only further agitated by the leftist suggestion that NO American citizen has "proper standing" to question their employees (elected representatives) on even the most fundamental questions.
Obama's problem with Americans isn't the mulatto color of his skin. It's the bright RED color of his belief system and agenda.
He is undoubtedly making mentors like Saul Alinsky, Frank Marshal Davis and Bill Ayers quite proud. But he is clearly losing the support of many Americans in that effort.
Before the dissent gets any wider spread, they have to do something. Out of nowhere comes Obama's "experts" on national security, the Southern Poverty Law Center. At the time of SPLC's founding, Julian Bond, who currently chairs the NAACP, was named the fledgling group's first President.
On the basis of these folks, Obama's Department of Homeland Security issued a "Right-wing Extremist" threat analysis, labeling every American with a gun or bible, or willing to publicly oppose Obama, a "potential domestic terrorist."
Yesterday, British newspaper, The Independent, published a story titled, "The right-wing crackpots taking over the mainstream, "in which British leftist writer Rupert Cornwell proceeds to assault all American citizens who are currently speaking out against Obama's "global" agenda, and warns of coming civil unrest, and of course, his authority on the matter is the Southern Poverty Law Center .
From the report, one SPLC official says, "every element is in place for a 'perfect storm' of home-grown extremism. For the first time, the detested federal government is run by a black man." There ya have it! That was easy! It's all about the "black man!"
"A struggling economy fuels discontent, with illegal immigrants accused of stealing American jobs." Or is it that unemployment has doubled to the highest level since the great depression, under the "black mans" brief administration?
"The military, long a breeding ground of the far right, is sending home veterans in vast numbers." Yes, those crazed military veterans: And don't forget: "Finally there is the Internet, which simultaneously propagates and intensifies the feelings of true believers and the conspiracy theories they devour." The so-called "birthers" have made headlines all over the world?
Clearly, Cornwell received his talking points memo from David Axelrod, who obviously got his from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Observer got the memo too, and they wasted no time attacking every American at odds with Obama's agenda. It's American Patriots against the world, or at least the leftists of the world. Cornwell concludes, "So might not elements even further to the right enter the fray - 'sovereign citizens' who believe they are above the law, or the new 'Oath Keepers' movement, of soldiers and police officers past and present, who believe their duty is to the constitution, not to elected politicians? Perhaps the healthcare rallies and the SPLC report were no coincidence, after all."
Well, let me just say that I think Obama's life could, in fact, be in danger, but not from Tea Party protesters, Town Hall protesters or so-called "birthers." All of these folks are well aware of the reality that assassinating the first "black" president would be counter-productive to their agenda.
The Obama press has been burning the midnight oil trying to make certain that Hillary Clinton's "right-wing conspiracy" ghosts were set up to take the fall for any misfortunate event that might befall an increasingly unpopular president. No "right-winger" is likely to even break wind in Obama's direction.
His leftist international friends are quite another story however: These are BIG buck, BIG socialism folks who play by no particular set of rules, like George Soros. As Obama becomes more of a liability than an asset to their cause, it is his own people who are most likely to make a martyr out of the mystery messiah.
In the British Observer, writer Paul Harris is even more extreme in his column: Fears for Barack Obama's safety as healthcare debate fuels extremism; and once again, we see the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The stage is being set: If anything happens to Obama, the entire world has been put on notice that Americans opposed to socialism from a "black" nobody president who won't even release his birth records, are responsible.
This leaves the door wide open for Obama's own friends to commit the crime with impunity, as they have already placed the American patriots' finger-prints on the imaginary murder weapon.. It would be the perfect crime blamed on the perfect right-wing storm. It's brilliant!
The leftist press around the world has already accused and convicted "right-wingers" of the murder. Talk about your grand conspiracy: Nobody does it better than the international leftist cabal.
But who is this Southern Poverty Law Center responsible for all of the recent "hate speech" aimed at constitutionally concerned American citizens opposed to bankruptcy-by-communism in America ?
In 2007, SPLC identified 888 separate "active hate groups" in the United States . Despite the events of 9/11 and an ongoing threat of additional terror strikes here and abroad, not one of the 888 "active hate groups" identified was Islamic.
Detroit, Michigan , had more violent killings than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, but none of the groups responsible for those killings made the list of 888.
Only white, capitalist, constitutionalist, Christian, pro-freedom, in other words, "right-wing extremists" made the list.
Black on white crime is not "hate." Black on black crime is not "hate." Muslim on Christian crime is not "hate." According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, only white, Christian, capitalists opposed to Marxism and attending Town Hall meetings are guilty of "hate." That's what their report says, and everyone from Obama's DHS and FBI to England's press has bought that report hook, line and sinker.
I too fear for Obama's life: But not from any of the people attending Tea Parties or Town Hall meetings in an effort to talk with their elected representatives. I fear that Obama's life is increasingly in danger from the very people who put him in power - The people he is currently failing, as the American people stand up to stop his secular socialist global agenda.
I am 100% opposed to the Obama administration and today's Democrat agenda. But I am here to tell you that the worst thing that could happen in America today is for Obama to be assassinated. Every Obama opponent knows this. He would be safest if he were guarded around the clock by American conservatives opposed to his entire agenda.
Only his leftist partners around the world would benefit from his assassination. Their agenda would move forward unchallenged if anything were to happen to Obama or his family. As his agenda meets with serious resistance at home, his puppet masters abroad will lose faith and eventually, their patience.
Only a freshman senator would have fallen for the trap Obama finds himself in today. He can't win: If he's very lucky, he can only live to tell about it one day.
Obama has spent an entire lifetime surrounded by some of the world's worst thugs. If he is unable to move their agenda forward, his life will be at risk from within his own ranks. However, the nation and the world will pay a heavy price, as both are being conditioned to blame it on average Americans who simply oppose all forms of intrusive tyrannical government.
As Obama's agenda is shut down by average Americans, his friends will turn on him. Liberals are already warning him not to back off on nationalized health care. But the people are not going to allow it to go forward.
Even though I oppose everything Obama is and everything he stands for, I pray for his safety. You can bet your last dollar: his well organized community is falling apart as his agenda begins to crumble. They will be very motivated to ignite a second civil war as they watch their agenda die a brutal political death.
Nothing would ignite a second civil war faster than the assassination of Barack Hussein Obama. I can only pray that the Secret Service does not take their cues from the Southern Poverty Law Center. If they are no better at understanding political security than British op-ed pages, Obama's life is indeed in danger. Not from so-called "right-wing extremists" angry over Obama's blatant disregard for the Constitution today. But from within his ranks, as those who placed him in power, become saddled with his failures.
GUNS ALLOWED IN ARIZONA BARS STARTING WEDNESDAY
Bartender Randy Shields was serving British brews and Arizona ambers as usual at Shady's bar in east Phoenix when he saw a customer walk in with a hunting knife strapped to his hip.
A disturbing image flashed through his mind - "that knife sliding between my ribs."
The customer willingly turned over the knife while he was in the bar, but Shields still worries about a new Arizona law that goes into effect Wednesday that will allow guns into Arizona bars and restaurants that serve alcohol.
Under the law, backed by the National Rifle Association, the 138,350 people with concealed-weapons permits in Arizona will be allowed to bring their guns into bars and restaurants that haven't posted signs banning them.
Those carrying the weapons aren't allowed to drink alcohol.
The new law has Shields and other bar owners and workers wondering: What's going to happen when guns are allowed in an atmosphere filled with booze and people with impaired judgment?
"Somebody can pull the trigger, then a bullet comes out, and people get hurt and killed," said Brad Henrich, owner of Shady's, a popular neighborhood bar that sees occasional minor scuffles. "The idea of anyone coming in with guns in a place that serves alcohol just seems ludicrous."
An 8 1/2-by-11-inch sign that says "No Firearms Allowed" and shows a red slash over a gun now hangs next to Henrich's liquor license. If a bar owner does not post such a state-approved sign, people with concealed weapons are allowed in with their guns.
There is no way to track how many of Arizona's 5,800 bars and restaurants that serve alcohol have posted such signs. The Arizona Department of Liquor Licensing and Control has signs available for download on its Web site and doesn't track that figure.
The department has provided 1,300 signs to bar and restaurant owners who went to the department in person or asked to have signs mailed to them.
A similar law took effect in July in Tennessee, with the same reaction from many bar owners who posted signs banning firearms. The NRA says 41 states now allow guns in businesses that serve alcohol.
"I hate to have to put them up," Mark DeSimone, owner of the Hidden House Cocktail Lounge in central Phoenix, said of the signs. "It looks scary. It looks to somebody like, should I go in this place because they obviously have a problem with people bringing weapons in."
DeSimone has signs banning guns next to his liquor license and outside the bar.
He said every bar owner should be concerned about the possible consequences of allowing anyone into a bar with a gun.
"You don't want people to even have a stick," he said. "When I take steak knives out (for customers), I look for the ones that don't have pointy ends."
Taking a gun into a bar banning the weapons would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a fine of up to $500.
But the law includes a partial legal defense. A person would be exempt if the sign banning guns had fallen down, the person wasn't an Arizona resident, or the notice was first posted less than a month earlier.
J.P. Nelson, director of the NRA's western region, said people with concealed-weapons permits have the right to protect themselves by bringing guns into bars and restaurants.
"Bad things happen in bars and restaurants," Nelson said. "People want to carry a gun and if the facility owner doesn't have a problem with it, there shouldn't be a problem. If a person starts drinking and gets in a shootout and kills someone, of course they're subject to criminal prosecution."
Marc Peagler, owner of the Silver Spur Saloon Restaurant in Cave Creek outside Phoenix, said he will allow people with concealed weapons permits to carry in his business, and Silver Spur will be safer because of it.
"It's a deterrent," he said. "In the criminal element, there is some logic that says when people look at a place that they might want to rob, the ones that have big signs up that say 'We do not permit firearms' would be the first target.
"They know there's not going to be anybody in there that can stop them," he said.
Arizonans are also allowed to openly carry guns - on a belt or holster, for example. Those people still won't be allowed in bars or restaurants serving alcohol under the new law if they're armed.
FIVE MORE NUCLEAR FACILITIES DISCOVERED IN IRAN
The British MI6 agents, who uncovered an underground uranium enrichment plant near the Iranian city of Qom, have discovered five more similar operations in the mountains northern Iran, increasing the number of Iran’s nuclear facilities to seven.
Photos and schematics of the plants have been hand-delivered to Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad. Mr. Dagan has conveyed them to the G20 leaders who were meeting in Pittsburgh.
The information, according to British reporter Gordon Thomas, was obtained from "an Iranian nuclear scientist’s smuggled laptop, defectors, and satellite imagery."
The new plants, according to British intelligence, are guarded by members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and staffed by nuclear scientists from the country’s central weapons facility at 180 Western Avenue in the Pars district of eastern Tehran.
MI6 remains responsible for gathering most of the intelligence data regarding nuclear developments in Iran for the international intelligence community, including the CIA. Mark Fitzpatrick, head of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, says: "Until MI6 uncovered the truth that Iran had a further clandestine way of producing highly enriched uranium, we had no idea."
The latest news has served only to heighten the resolve of Iran to enter the elite nuclear club of nations, which now includes the United States, Russian, China, Great Britain, France, India, Israel, and Pakistan.
In Tehran, Ayatollah Khameni, Iran’s supreme leader, authorized his new chief of staff, Mohammadi Golpayegni, to announce: "Our new plant at Qom, God willing, will soon become operational and will make our enemies blind."
Qom contains one of the holiest sites of the Shiite Muslims - - the shrine of Fatema Maesume, the revered sister of Imam Ali ibn Musa Rida, a great Islamic scholar. A pre-emptive attack on Qom would do much to strengthen a coalition of Shiite and Sunni Muslims against the West.
Over the weekend, Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the opening of the annual Labour Party conference in Brighton that Iran’s attitude "is the serial deception of many years. The international community has no choice but to draw a line in the sand."
He added that the alternative will lead to confrontation.
England’s Foreign Secretary David Milliband said he would refuse to rule out military action against Iran.
MI6 agents also have uncovered evidence that the Qom plant could house 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium - the key element in a nuclear bomb. The five other plants would give the rogue nation a combined capacity of 15,000 centrifuges, far outstripping the 8,000 capacity of the underground plant at Natanz.
HIGH COURT WILL DECIDE
Whether Strict Gun Laws
Violate Second Amendment rights
The Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to decide whether strict local and state gun control laws violate the Second Amendment, ensuring another high-profile battle over the rights of gun owners.
The court said it will review a lower court ruling that upheld a handgun ban in Chicago. Gun rights supporters challenged gun laws in Chicago and some suburbs immediately following the high court's decision in June 2008 that struck down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia, a federal enclave.
The new case tests whether last year's ruling applies as well to local and state laws.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld ordinances barring the ownership of handguns in most cases in Chicago and suburban Oak Park, Ill.
Judge Frank Easterbrook, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, said that "the Constitution establishes a federal republic where local differences are to be cherished as elements of liberty rather than extirpated in order to produce a single, nationally applicable rule."
"Federalism is an older and more deeply rooted tradition than is a right to carry any particular kind of weapon," Easterbrook wrote.
Evaluating arguments over the extension of the Second Amendment is a job "for the justices rather than a court of appeals," he said.
The high court took his suggestion Wednesday.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then an appeals court judge, was part of a three-judge panel in New York that reached a similar conclusion in January.
Judges on both courts - Republican nominees in Chicago and Democratic nominees in New York - said only the Supreme Court could decide whether to extend last year's ruling throughout the country. Many, but not all, of the constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights have been applied to cities and states.
The New York ruling also has been challenged, but the court did not act on it Wednesday. Sotomayor would have to sit out any case involving decisions she was part of on the appeals court. Although the issue is the same in the Chicago case, there is no ethical bar to her participation in its consideration by the Supreme Court.
Several Republican senators cited the Sotomayor gun ruling, as well as her reticence on the topic at her confirmation hearing, in explaining their decision to oppose her confirmation to the high court.
The case will be argued next year.
The case is McDonald v. Chicago, 08-1521.
OBAMA SHOULD LISTEN TO THE FRENCH
Did you ever think we'd be getting lessons in power politics from the French? Well, under Barack Obama, that sad moment has in fact arrived.
The Wall Street Journal reports that French President Nicolas Sarzoky wanted to confront Iran at the U.N. last week, but it was who refused. A top administration official told the French they didn't want to spoil the image of Obama's success at the U.N.
I'm not kidding.
According to The Journal, President Sarzoky was so frustrated by Obama's spinelessness that he mocked him indirectly in his U.N. address saying, "We are right to talk about the future, but the present comes before the future, and the present includes two major nuclear crises... We live in the real world, not a virtual one."
I never thought I'd say this, Mr. Obama, but you should listen to the French.
OBAMA IS CAUGHT IN ANOTHER HEALTH CARE HORROR STORY
Obama used not one, but two faulty anecdotes during his health care speech to Congress earlier this month.
Obama told a story about a Texas woman who lost her insurance just before breast cancer surgery, "because she forgot to declare a case of acne." But the truth is Robin Beaton lost her coverage because she failed to report a heart condition and did not list her weight accurately.
Republican Congressman Joe Barton fought the insurance company until it restored coverage, allowing Beaton to get the surgery she needed. The Associated Press writes: "Beaton's case is just one cited by Obama that mixes fact with fiction."
Obama also told a story about an Illinois man who died because his coverage was also canceled. But in congressional testimony, the man's sister said his insurance was reinstated and that treatment actually extended his life for four years.
SCHOOL DAZE FOR OBAMA
If you're like me, you know children are evil. They're thieving, selfish creatures who delight in smearing mucous on your belongings.
So naturally you'd think I'd support Obama's plan for longer school days and shorter summer vacations. After all, that means fewer brats out there, defacing my tree fort made from discarded copies of Oui.
But, oh contraire! (Which is French.) I think Obama is off base, for three reasons:
First: When something blows, ordering more of it doesn't help. Fact is, we don't need more schooling, we need better schools. Sadly, teachers unions have created a lock on jobs for even the most moronically incompetent and the only way for a teacher to lose a job these days is if she gives one to a student.
Worse, sending kids back for three more hours of daily schooling in places like Chicago or Baltimore is like an academic version of stop-loss. They learn more about running for their lives than reading for enjoyment.
And really, Obama's reasoning has nothing to do with being competitive. We've already learned from his United Nations speech that Obama finds winning distasteful. No, this idea comes from his own opinions about America: That when compared to a far more sophisticated Europe, we're all just hicks from the sticks who think Belgium is a name for one of those fruity, overpriced beers - which, as you know, is true.
Finally, I can't help but think that Obama wants kids to stay in school longer so they can learn more cool songs to sing... about Obama.
Mmm, mmm, mmm!
LAWMAKERS INCREASE SPENDING FOR THEMSELVES
Congress is on the verge of giving itself a bump in its annual budget - even as local governments, families and businesses across the country are tightening their belts in the worst recession in decades.
Under a House-Senate conference measure, approved by the House last week and poised for passage in the Senate on Wednesday, spending for the legislative branch will increase 5.8 percent this year, boosting Capitol Hill’s annual budget to $4.7 billion.
The measure includes a hodgepodge of new funding for lawmakers: a $500,000 pilot program for senators to send out postcards about their town hall meetings, $30,000 for receptions for foreign dignitaries and $4 million for consultants - with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) getting up to nine each and Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) getting up to three more.
There’s $15.8 million for salaries for the Senate Appropriations Committee - plus an extra $950,000 for the committee’s administrative expenses.
Funding for House office buildings will jump a staggering 128 percent, to $84 million. Some of that money will go to replace a roof at the Rayburn House Office Building, and an additional $50 million is being allocated to renovate the Cannon House Office Building.
The Architect of the Capitol will see a 17.8 percent hike to deal with infrastructure repairs, and the Government Printing Office’s revolving fund will increase a whopping 155 percent, to $12.7 million, to deal with technology upgrades and repairs, according to the conference report.
The bill - which Barack Obama could sign as soon as Wednesday - funds operations and staff salaries in the personal offices of the 535 members of Congress, dozens of legislative committees in the House and Senate, the GPO, the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, the Government Accountability Office and the Capitol Police.
Supporters of the bill argue that they were relatively frugal this year. Last year, Congress increased its funding 10.9 percent over the fiscal 2008 level - and the $4.7 it’s appropriating to itself this year is less than the $5 billion Obama set forth in his budget earlier this year.
AS PER INSTRUCTIONS FROM MY SERVER PEOPLE
THERE WILL BE NO ADDITIONS, CHANGES OR MODIFICATIONS
TO STEVESPAGES.COM UNTIL AFTER 10-09-09
See you all then...
THE SERVER
Has Migrated
All of stevespages.com to the new server
BUT HAVE THE EVER FUCKED-UP THE SITE!!!
Half the site is no longer around, and the other half is all screwed-up!
In addition, I cannot access the control panel and attempt to correct the situation!!
THIS WEEK'S
Football Predictions
(I bet you are thrilled!)
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And, yes, stevespages is still screwed ... and the server people are doing nothing to help!
PUNDITS BATTER NOBEL COMMITTEE
For Awarding Obama
Peace prize
A raft of pundits and even one network anchor used the Sunday morning news shows to batter the Nobel committee for awarding Obama the Peace Prize before he had a chance to turn his lofty rhetoric into historic accomplishments.
The decision, announced Friday, to award Obama the peace prize has drawn widespread astonishment. While past recipients like Al Gore praised the move, even Obama said upon learning of the award that he did not deserve it. "Surprised and deeply humbled," he said he would nevertheless travel to Oslo in December to accept the honor.
But some analysts said the president should have rejected the award outright, and thrashed the committee for in their view prematurely honoring the president.
"It's not clear to me (the committee) speaks for the world. It speaks for five Norwegians," The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol said on "FOX News Sunday." "This is an anti-American committee."
The Nobel committee said that its decision to honor the president was motivated by Obama's initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism. Critics of the decision, though, took it as a slap at past U.S. military action.
"I think (Obama) should have refused it, respectfully. But I think the second-best thing would be to go over and give a pro-American speech," Kristol said.
Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, said for the president to go to Oslo would "sort of add to the farce." She said Obama should send the mother of a fallen U.S. soldier to accept the prize on behalf of the U.S. military, "to send the message to remind the Nobel committee that each one of them sleeps soundly at night ... because the U.S. military is the greatest peacekeeping force in the world today."
Conservative columnist George Will said the Nobel committee essentially awarded Obama for "values and attitudes shared by a majority of the world's population."
"The Nobel Prize committee would with this decision have forfeited its reputation for seriousness if it had a reputation for seriousness," he said on ABC's "This Week."
Some Republicans, like Sen. John McCain, were more reserved in their reaction, simply congratulating Obama for winning the high honor.
"I can't divine all their intentions -- but I think part of their decision-making was expectations, and I'm sure the president understands that he now has even more to live up to," McCain said on CNN's "State of the Union." "But as Americans, we're proud when our president receives an award of that prestigious category."
NPR's Juan Williams said that while Obama has not yet "earned it at this juncture," it's hardly an insult to America.
"Our president just won the Nobel Peace Prize," he said. "They just honored the United States and our stature as the lone superpower in the world and our ability to bring peace."
Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said Obama earned the award by moving to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center and CIA prisons.
But Bob Schieffer, host of CBS' "Face the Nation," said in his brief editorial commentary Sunday that the committee may have done Obama a disservice.
"I would guess no one at the White House was praying for the president to win the Nobel just yet, not because they're selfless humble souls whose only goal is to help humanity but because they are very good professional politicians who would know better than most of us that an undeserved accolade has a high probability of backfire," he said. "I generally agree with the president's approach on foreign policy, but the Nobel Committee did him no favors by giving him the award before he had anything to show for his efforts. ... What the Nobel Committee has managed to change -- and I am sorry to say it -- is the way we look on the prize."
DID WEAPONS FAIL U.S. TROOPS DURING AFGHANISTAN ASSAULT?
In the chaos of an early morning assault on a remote U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips' M4 carbine quit firing as militant forces surrounded the base. The machine gun he grabbed after tossing the rifle aside didn't work either.
When the battle in the small village of Wanat ended, nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded. A detailed study of the attack by a military historian found that weapons failed repeatedly at a "critical moment" during the firefight on July 13, 2008, putting the outnumbered American troops at risk of being overrun by nearly 200 insurgents.
Which raises the question: Eight years into the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, do U.S. armed forces have the best guns money can buy?
Despite the military's insistence that they do, a small but vocal number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq has complained that the standard-issue M4 rifles need too much maintenance and jam at the worst possible times.
A week ago, eight U.S. troops were killed at a base near Kamdesh, a town near Wanat. There's no immediate evidence of weapons failures at Kamdesh, but the circumstances were eerily similar to the Wanat battle: insurgents stormed an isolated stronghold manned by American forces stretched thin by the demands of war.
Army Col. Wayne Shanks, a military spokesman in Afghanistan, said a review of the battle at Kamdesh is under way. "It is too early to make any assumptions regarding what did or didn't work correctly," he said.
Complaints about the weapons the troops carry, especially the M4, aren't new. Army officials say that when properly cleaned and maintained, the M4 is a quality weapon that can pump out more than 3,000 rounds before any failures occur.
The M4 is a shorter, lighter version of the M16, which made its debut during the Vietnam war. Roughly 500,000 M4s are in service, making it the rifle troops on the front lines trust with their lives.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a leading critic of the M4, said Thursday the Army needs to move quickly to acquire a combat rifle suited for the extreme conditions U.S. troops are fighting in.
U.S. special operations forces, with their own acquisition budget and the latitude to buy gear the other military branches can't, already are replacing their M4s with a new rifle.
"The M4 has served us well but it's not as good as it needs to be," Coburn said.
Battlefield surveys show that nearly 90 percent of soldiers are satisfied with their M4s, according to Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller, head of the Army office that buys soldier gear. Still, the rifle is continually being improved to make it even more reliable and lethal.
Fuller said he's received no official reports of flawed weapons performance at Wanat. "Until it showed up in the news, I was surprised to hear about all this," he said.
The study by Douglas Cubbison of the Army Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., hasn't been publicly released. Copies of the study have been leaked to news organizations and are circulating on the Internet.
Cubbison's study is based on an earlier Army investigation and interviews with soldiers who survived the attack at Wanat. He describes a well-coordinated attack by a highly skilled enemy that unleashed a withering barrage with AK-47 automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
The soldiers said their weapons were meticulously cared for and routinely inspected by commanders. But still the weapons had breakdowns, especially when the rifles were on full automatic, which allows hundreds of bullets to be fired a minute.
The platoon-sized unit of U.S. soldiers and about two dozen Afghan troops was shooting back with such intensity the barrels on their weapons turned white hot. The high rate of fire appears to have put a number of weapons out of commission, even though the guns are tested and built to operate in extreme conditions.
Cpl. Jonathan Ayers and Spc. Chris McKaig were firing their M4s from a position the soldiers called the "Crow's Nest." The pair would pop up together from cover, fire half a dozen rounds and then drop back down.
On one of these trips up, Ayers was killed instantly by an enemy round. McKaig soon had problems with his M4, which carries a 30-round magazine.
"My weapon was overheating," McKaig said, according to Cubbison's report. "I had shot about 12 magazines by this point already and it had only been about a half hour or so into the fight. I couldn't charge my weapon and put another round in because it was too hot, so I got mad and threw my weapon down."
The soldiers also had trouble with their M249 machine guns, a larger weapon than the M4 that can shoot up to 750 rounds per minute.
Cpl. Jason Bogar fired approximately 600 rounds from his M-249 before the weapon overheated and jammed the weapon.
Bogar was killed during the firefight, but no one saw how he died, according to the report.
(So...the truth is finally coming out about the gawd-awful M4 and M16!
It's about time!
Pieces I have read have stated that of the 58,000 Americans killed in Nam, 51% of them were due to M16 failure!
Now, here we are, 45 years later, and the same piece of crap is responsible for failing in ragheadland!
Let's face it ... it was a piece of shit when it was first announced, and after 242 "improvements" dictated by the failures in Nam, it was declared "God's Gift to the Fighting Man".
Then they dumped the M4 on our troops, and in the short time it has seen action, it has undergone another 24 "improvements"!
266 "improvements", and over 59,000 dead GIs do not make a piece of plastic crap a combat weapon!)
IT'S AN AMERICAN GAME
Played By Two American Teams
In an American stadium
Televised by an American network.
So, why the hell were some of the official judgment calls from the field and some of the commercials in some kind of Spic language?
The AMERICAN LANGUAGE is ENGLISH!
I'M JUST NOT
Up To
Doing an opinion today
What with fighting with the idiots at FedEx since Friday.
Added to fighting with the idiots who are running the server for stevespages since Friday.
I'm all tuckered-out.
"THE AMERICAN"
Makes
Endangered species list!
"The American" is officially on the list of endangered species today, and unless we do something to save this vital species quickly, freedom will exist nowhere on earth. Doubt this statement for even a second, at your own peril!
After 232 years of unparalleled freedom, liberty and prosperity, the United States of America is on the brink of collapse. Yes, in part due to evil political forces who long ago sold their souls for an ounce of wealth and power, pushing the nation into a corner to further their quest for even more power -- but to a larger degree, due to the decline of the American spirit from sea to shining sea.
The land of the free and home of the brave is now controlled by the entitlement generation. That magical generation that comes along in every free society, once the people at large have forgotten the price and value of individual freedom.
Once the people have been trained to despise that which we all once held in common, the love of freedom and liberty, and focus all attention upon that which divides, our racial, religious, sexual and economic "diversity," placing that which divides us above that which once united us, the nation cannot stand!
Class envy becomes the driving force in all political decisions. Deep seated division and dissention rule the day and people look to take that which they feel entitled to, from those who used their freedom to "earn."
To be sure, we currently have the most corrupt anti-American government in the history of the United States. But what bothers me more is how we got here, and how the decline of "Americanism" is likely to make matters much worse, before things can get any better.
At the end of the day, the American people get the government they vote for, and today too many Americans are voting for a government that promises "free stuff" in place of "freedom." There is no running from this reality.
As is the purpose of a good vacation, I had the opportunity to leave the phone, email and news behind and spend a few days in the sun and surf with my family. It gave me an opportunity to clear the cobwebs. It also provided an unexpected but interesting lesson which I want to share with readers.
Years ago, you couldn't get a half a mile off shore in the Gulf of Mexico without having a family of dolphin swim up beside the boat and almost leap into the boat and pop a top with ya. This time, the dolphin wouldn't come within twenty feet of the boat, and I couldn't help but wonder what had changed.
In talking with a local area boat captain later that evening, I learned that the local government had outlawed feeding dolphin some years earlier, instituting a $10,000 fine if you are caught feeding dolphin even once.
We have never fed the dolphin in the first place, but apparently, many others had and over time, the dolphin had become too friendly with boaters, too dependent upon meals from vacationers and eventually, an endangered species in the Gulf as the dolphin either died from a boat prop, or had lost the ability to feed themselves after snow birds returned home up north.
The only way to save the dolphin was to outlaw the feeding of dolphin, so that these beautiful mammals could regain their ability to survive in the wild.
And then it hit me, how odd that we were able to figure out the damage done to dolphins by making them dependent upon "free food" - but could not make the same judgment in light of the life long damage done to entire generations of human beings, by the same mistakes that had cost dolphins and many other species their very lives, to the point of extinction in some cases.
I began to wonder why we were intelligent enough to recognize the dangers involved in free-feeding dolphins, but not see the same dangers involved in free-feeding human beings, creating the same kind of dependencies that put many other species on the endangered list.
Then I realized - if dolphins could vote, it would still be legal to feed them...
Welfare is not an act of personal generosity. It is a political strategy for gaining and holding power.
Charity requires the consent of the giver, without which, it’s tyranny, not charity.
Today’s "left" (the current cabal running Washington DC) is only generous with the earnings and assets of others. How many times do we have to see the embarrassing charitable donations, or lack thereof, in people who preach about welfare the most?
Barack Obama and Joe Biden have the worst history of personal charitable giving of any two men to ever enter the White House, yet they are the most "welfare" minded individuals in US history. Though they have a dismal record of giving personally, they demand that all others make sacrifices for the "needy," which they have never made individually.
As I have said before, welfare is not an act of charity or generosity. It is an act of tyranny against America’s most productive, and a political strategy aimed at empowering people like Obama and Biden, not average citizens.
If dolphins could vote, we would be encouraged to feed them in order to gain their political support, and in the end, their political dependency upon those who promise to feed them forever.
But since dolphins can't vote, we can't free-feed them.
Since government dependents make perfect Democrat voters, we must continue to feed them even though the result is an entire generation of entitled dependents increasingly unable to feed themselves in the wild.
The end result is a dying breed in the land of the free and home of the brave. "The American" is officially on the endangered species list as a species no longer as interested in personal freedom as socio-economic equality - A growing number of Americans who have been trained by their feeders to feel entitled to the spoils of others who have toiled and sacrificed for the natural fruits of their labor.
So long as American citizens continue to choose the life of a parasite, free-feeding upon the benefits earned by others, they will continue to vote their feeders into power. For a time, this will seem a fantastic victory for the "have-nots" until the atrophy of individual survival skills sets in, and the "haves" opt out, leaving the feeding trough empty.
What happens next will shock many Americans. When those who have been trained not to feed themselves are no longer being fed by others, they will first turn to violence, and then, begin to die completely ill-prepared to survive on their own.
What has been done to this generation of American citizens, all in an evil political strategy aimed at empowering the political elite while enslaving both "haves" and "have-nots," is nothing short of criminal.
If there is a $10,000 fine for free-feeding dolphin, there should be mandatory life imprisonment for those who insist upon free-feeding human beings. Destroying the life of a dolphin is bad enough, but doing even worse to human beings is unforgivable.
In the end, nobody will react more violently than those who were so easily fooled by the promise of free-stuff. None will be more aggressive in their demands for access to the earnings of others. - None will pay a greater price for the disaster they created either!
OREGON APARTMENT COMPLEX BANS FLYING THE AMERICAN FLAG
An Oregon apartment complex is banning its residents from flying American flags, not only from their dwellings but also their vehicles, KATU in Portland reported.
Residents' outrage started when Jim Clausen, whose son is in the military and on his way back to Iraq, was told he couldn't fly an American flag from the back of his motorcycle.
If he didn't take the flag down, he was told he'd face eviction, the station reported.
"It floored me," Clausen told the station. "I can't believe she was saying what she was saying. It [the flag] stands for the people that can no longer stand - who died in wars. That's why I fly the flag."
Sharron White, a long-time resident, was told by management to take down the flag she's flown on her car for eight years because "someone might get offended."
"I just said to her, 'They'll just have to get over it,'" White told the station.
The ban also applies to flag stickers on cars, as well as sports flags.
KATU attempted to contact management at the apartment complex, but no one returned their calls.
(No one returned the calls because they were outside making sure their camels still had the stones in their vaginas!)
A FEW LITTLE ITEMS
So, Congress decided to stop all money going to ACORN at the end of August. We all felt relief that our tax money was going to be given to some other bullshit agency. Well, don't feel too relieved! Congress decided yesterday that they are going to start giving OUR money to ACORN on October 31st! (Evidently Congress has Halloween mixed-up with April Fool's Day...)
Congress decided to give $800-BILLION of our tax dollars to bail out banks, financial institutions and other non-worthy corporations. So now Wall Street has announced that their executives are going to receive $1.8-BILLION in bonuses next week! (Obama is really "re-distributing the wealth" ... from the hard-working tax-payer to the already overly rich...)
A 20-year-old college student causes ACORN to go bottoms-up by taping ACORN agencies assisting her to set-up whore houses using 13-year-old illegal aliens as whores. So what happens next? ACORN is suing her for $5-MILLION! (ACORN must think that she is receiving a government grant to pay for her tuition...)
So Al Gore was giving a speech about his "global warming" fiasco. There was a microphone set-up so that there could be questions after. An Irish man questioned Gore's accuracy and honesty, and was forcibly removed from the building by a few of Gore's strong-armed guards. (Guess that microphone was only for use by those who support Gore's idiocy...)
THE HEALTH CARE BILLS
And
The First Amendment
The unprecedented response of Americans to the attempts by the Obama administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress to establish the takeover of health care in our nation by the federal government has been gratifying to say the least. However, it has also revealed the fact that in order to counter the opposition of ordinary Americans this administration is preparing to take extraordinary measures to eliminate our rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution.
This effort is going far beyond the use of the mainstream media to categorize those who oppose anything President Obama does as racists or the result of some vast right-wing conspiracy. The plan is to eliminate the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, and the right to petition our own government for redress of grievances. Of course, the far left has been trying for years to stifle free speech with its politically correct movement that has taken hold in college campuses, public schools, and even businesses.
The concept is not new. It was successfully practiced by the Nazi Party in Germany and the Communist revolutionists in Russia, China, and Cuba. The idea is to demonize the opposition and to shut them down by establishing complete control over the news media, and any other methods of free communication of thought. Of course, the vast majority of Americans believe that this type of control can never happen in our country. Unfortunately, it is already happening and there are efforts in the works to make it happen faster.
While Americans of every political persuasion try to voice their concerns at town hall meetings, members of Congress run for cover by canceling events or limiting entry only to those who will agree with their positions. The President himself conducts town hall meetings that are so carefully orchestrated that questions and answers are prepared beforehand. The voices of dissent at many of these meetings are locked out and even assaulted by a squad of carefully selected goons from the SEIU, a so-called labor union that is becoming more and more like the brown shirts of Nazi Party every day.
When Hitler or any of his Nazi Party cohorts were speaking at public functions the platform they used was surrounded by brown shirts to "protect them". Their actual job was to station themselves both outside and inside of the place where the function was being held. They denied entry to those that might not be true believers and if anyone did make it inside they were quickly and violently removed if they failed to follow the party line. Doesn't that sound familiar?
In addition, the Nazis and Communists also successfully turned people against each other by encouraging neighbors to report on neighbors, students to snitch on teachers, and even children to turn in their parents if they strayed from the party line by word or deed. The electronic age has made it much easier for this type of thing. The White House simply set up an e-mail link so people could report anyone who said anything that the left considered "fishy" about the health care bills.
When you have a black man beaten up outside a town hall meeting in St. Louis because he dared to hand out "Don't Tread on Me" flags and an elderly white cancer patient forcibly removed when he tried to enter one of these meetings in Florida it certainly looks like the same tactics employed by dictatorships around the world. Of course, the so-called mainstream news media do their part for the Obama Administration by ignoring these incidents. However, if they can't ignore it, they will just falsely report information in an attempt to turn it to the advantage of their own political agenda.
With massive "tea parties" being held around the country to protest the tax and spend policies of the Democrats in Congress the major networks have found them impossible to ignore so they use "attack journalism" to report them. Virtually nothing is reported about who attends the rallies or what they are saying. Instead they are reported as Republican staged rallies attended only by members of right wing fringe groups. In addition, they are certainly not going to accurately report that tens of thousands of Americans are attending these demonstrations. Instead, they will follow the policy of one newspaper that reported that less than 300 people attended a rally in Columbus, Ohio that police estimated was actually attended by over 10,000 people.
However, the most blatant lie perpetrated recently was done by MSNBC which is not at all surprising since NBC news has established itself as the official network of the Obama Administration. I personally saw the handwriting on the wall when NBC News Anchor Brian Williams bowed before President Obama after concluding a self serving propaganda presentation that clearly set this President and his polices above the rest of us peons. This bow was something no journalist in the history of the United States has ever done before a President of our Republic.
MSNBC decided to go one step further. When the President was speaking in Phoenix, Arizona to the VFW there were numerous people outside of the building exercising their right of free speech. One of these was a gentleman who exercised his right to openly carry an AR-15 rifle and a pistol on his belt in order to support his 2nd Amendment rights. This is legal in Arizona and reporters for MSNBC went ballistic, showing close-up film of the weapons and reporting how serious this was that there was a black man in the White House and that whites were showing up at his speech with weapons. There was one major problem with this report however. Others had captured the same images of the protestor and had not edited out his face and arms. See, the problem for MSNBC is that the protestor was a black man.
The NBC news networks are not alone in this. Other major media outlets such as CNN, ABC, CBS, and the New York Times are also practicing the Dr. Joseph Goebbels School of Journalism. Goebbels was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda and he had two main functions. The first was to provide unadulterated praise for anything the Fuehrer and his fellow party members were doing and secondly to silence or at least stifle any dissenting voices. This also sounds chillingly familiar.
Of course, dissenting opinions are alive and well and they are a real irritant to the Obama Administration and its supporters in Congress. Thus, they are taking aggressive steps to deal with this opposition. Their first target is talk radio that primarily consists of conservative commentators. This dominance has not come about by any conspiracy, but by the forces of a free market. Liberal talk radio shows have consistently failed to attract the audiences that people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do so they don't attract advertisers. The liberal talk shows literally die from lack of interest.
This is unacceptable to the far left so legislation was introduced by Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to reinstate the so-called Fairness Doctrine under another name and provide for balanced broadcasting of liberal and conservative talk radio shows. This would force broadcasters to essentially provide left wing programming for free and would force many stations to either go bankrupt or to cancel all talk radio programs. Either way, the mission would be accomplished; the American people would not be able to have free access to viewpoints that dissent from the "official" party line.
When the public realized what was about to happen an outcry arose that kept the legislation from passing so President Obama decided to ignore both Congress and the American people and make one of his famous end-runs by appointing a "Diversity Czar" to force the FCC to do the administration’s bidding when it comes to conservative programs and views. The Czar is Mark Lloyd, a far left activist who has openly praised Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez for his silencing of the free press in Venezuela. In fact, Lloyd has made it clear that he has little use for the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He has stated:
"It should be clear by now that my focus ... is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction of from the critical examination of other communications policies"
I don't think James Madison considered the First Amendment "a distraction" and I doubt that the vast majority of the American people believe that is the case. Yet, the President of the United States apparently has that opinion, or at least one of his appointees does.
Of course, talk radio is not the only target of the far left members of Congress and the Obama Administration. They are also deeply concerned about the use of the Internet to get out the messages that are ignored by the liberals in the media. For example, the tea parties were primarily the result of people spreading the word online and the left wants this stopped.
As a result, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) has introduced legislation that would transfer even more power from the people and the Congress to the Executive Branch of Government. The legislation is supposedly designed to promote cybersecurity, but it has little to do with protecting government sites such as those in the Pentagon from cyber attacks by our enemies. Instead, it targets the private use of the Internet by millions of Americans every day.
There are two key provisions of the bill and both of them contain direct assaults on freedom of speech and the press. First, the law would allow President Obama to seize control of privately operated Internet networks during a Cyber Emergency. What is a Cyber Emergency? There is no definition of it in the legislation so it is essentially anything the President decides. He can shut down massive portions of the Internet at any time for any reason.
Secondly, the bill also allows the Executive Branch to control the Internet by requiring that certain operators of networks that are deemed ‘critical" by the government must be operated by "professionals" licensed by the government. The definitions of the terms "critical" and "professionals" are again left entirely to the Obama administration. I am not an Internet expert, and may be just a retired Constitutional Lawyer and former Military Intelligence Officer, but I'm pretty sure I just saw this same form of Internet control exercised in Iran when protests broke out after a clearly fraudulent election. Of course, that could never happen here; or could it?
What would happen to our efforts to petition our government for "a redress of our grievances" if we were denied the means to communicate with each other?
A VIEW: ACADEMIC DISHONESTY
College education is a costly proposition with tuition, room and board at some colleges topping $50,000 a year. Is it worth it? Increasing evidence suggests that it's not. Since the 1960s, academic achievement scores have plummeted, but student college grade point averages (GPA) have skyrocketed. In October 2001, the Boston Globe published an article entitled "Harvard's Quiet Secret: Rampant Grade Inflation." The article reported that a record 91 percent of Harvard University students were awarded honors during the spring graduation. The newspaper called Harvard's grading practices "the laughing stock of the Ivy League." Harvard is by no means unique. For example, 80 percent of the grades given at the University of Illinois are A's and B's. Fifty percent of students at Columbia University are on the Dean's list. At Stanford University, where F grades used to be banned, only 6 percent of student grades were as low as a C. In the 1930s, the average GPA at American colleges and universities was 2.35, about a C plus; today the national average GPA is 3.2, more than a B.
Today's college students are generally dumber than their predecessors. An article in the Wall Street Journal (1/30/97) reported that a "bachelor of Arts degree in 1997 may not be the equal of a graduation certificate from an academic high school in 1947." The American Council on Education found that only 15 percent of universities require tests for general knowledge; only 17 percent for critical thinking; and only 19 percent for minimum competency. According a recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the percentage of college graduates proficient in prose literacy has declined from 40 percent to 31 percent within the past decade. Employers report that many college graduates lack the basic skills of critical thinking, writing and problem-solving and some employers find they must hire English and math teachers to teach them how to write memos and perform simple computations.
What is being labeled grade inflation is simply a euphemism for academic dishonesty. After all, it's dishonesty when a professor assigns a grade the student did not earn. When a university or college confers a degree upon a student who has not mastered critical thinking skills, writing and problem-solving, it's academic dishonesty. Of course, I might be in error calling it dishonesty. Perhaps academic standards have been set so low that idiots could earn A's and B's.
Academic dishonesty and deception go beyond fraudulent grades. "Minding the Campus" is a newsletter published by the Manhattan Institute. Edward Fiske tells a chilling tale of deception titled "Gaming the College Rankings" (9/17/09). The U.S. News and World Report college rankings are worshiped by some college administrators, and they go to great lengths to strengthen their rankings. Some years ago, University of Miami omitted scores of athletes and special admission students so as to boost SAT scores of incoming freshmen. At least one college mailed dollar bills to alumni with a request that they send them back to the annual fund thereby inflating the number of alumni donors.
"Gaming the College Rankings" contains an insert by John Leo, who is the editor of "Minding the Campus," reporting that in the mid-1990s, Boston University raised its SAT scores by excluding the verbal scores of foreign students whilst including their math scores. Monmouth University simply added 200 SAT points to its group scores. University of California reported that 34 of its professors were members of a prestigious engineering association when in fact only 17 of their current faculty were. Baylor University offered students, who were already admitted to the university, $300 in bookstore credits to take the SAT again in the hopes of boosting Baylor's SAT averages.
Academic dishonesty, coupled with incompetency, particularly at the undergraduate level, doesn't bode well for the future of our nation. And who's to blame? Most of the blame lies at the feet of the boards of trustees, who bear ultimate responsibility for the management of our colleges and universities.
(When I went to school ... having to walk 3 miles each way, barefoot, in the snow, and uphill both ways ... we received number grades. 70% was passing and 69% was failing. There were no "extra credit questions", there were no curves, bell or otherwise, and there was no "rounding-up"!
What grade you received was the grade you earned, and if you failed you had two choices ... retake the course or get the hell out of the school!
I liked it that way...)
THE PREMIS IS:
Washington, D.C.
Is hit with a 10K-ton nuclear device
At least that is what the TV "special" is all about.
But ... I find some of their "facts" a little puzzling.
They state there are 9 million people at D.C. at the time of the explosion (7 million residents and 2 million visitors). They also state that the entire D.C. area is destroyed by the blast.
Then they give figures ... 100,000 instantly "vaporized"; 300,000 injured; 500,000 "escape" (how the hell do you "escape" a surprise ground zero nuclear blast?). Somehow these numbers don't add up to 9 million!
They go into great detail as to how the government is going to "save" all the politicians, lawyers, judges and "special people".
And now I just gotta ask...
"WHY? AREN'T THE ABOVE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THE FINANCIAL, MORAL, ETHICAL AND LEGAL PROBLEMS IN AMERICA!"
As far as I am concerned a nuclear attack on D.C. would be a blessing!
Get rid of all the professional politicians, the elected and appointed judges, the political action lawyers, the chosen czars, and at the same time remove an area of the United States with one of the highest crime and welfare ratings!
What more could we ask for?
Oh, and a secondary advantage would be that they would have to move the Capitol to an area not contaminated with radiation ... I would suggest Kansas.
First we hold general elections where only those who read, write, and speak English are allowed to vote to replace the fools and crooks who were killed in the attack.
Next we take care of the immediate needs of the productive population of the United States ... health, education, The Ten Commandments, The Bill Of Rights and our Constitution.
After that we rebuild all our presidential and military memorials (screw the rest!) ... in Kansas ... and hold a gigantic celebration of the re-birth of the United States of America!
And finally ... and FINALLY ... we go about nuking the hell outta Pakistan, China, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, if the responsible party does not own up to the attack!! (When I was in grammar school the nuns used to punish the entire class if the responsible person did not own-up to the offense. If it was good enough for Sister Mary Theresa or Mother Agnes, it is good enough for the U.S.A.!)
SENATORS RAID TROOP FUNDING FOR PET PROJECTS
Senators are raiding money meant to pay for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan so they can fund pet projects in their home districts, taxpayer watchdog groups charged this week.
Data compiled by the organizations show that senators attached 778 earmarks worth nearly $2.7 billion to the 2010 defense appropriations bill.
They range from a $25 million earmark for a World War II museum in New Orleans to a $20 million earmark for an institute named after the late Sen. Edward Kennedy in Boston.
"The (Defense) Department cannot tolerate earmarking funds that are more urgently needed to support our troops in the field," four watchdog groups wrote Wednesday in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, urging him to object to the congressional earmarks in the "strongest possible terms."
Obama and Gates have tried to keep excess spending out of the $626 billion defense bill. But the bill passed by the Senate last week included several items the Pentagon did not request -- including $2.5 billion for 10 C-17 cargo planes and $512 million for nine more F-18 Navy fighters than requested.
The Center for Defense Information, National Taxpayers Union, Project on Government Oversight and Taxpayers for Common Sense expressed concerns about such spending -- but wrote that combined with the earmarks, the bill "will reduce already insufficient funds for troops in the field."
The groups are concerned the money is being drawn from the accounts for operations and maintenance, which provides funding for training, maintenance and equipment parts.
"It's outrageous," said Winslow Wheeler, a long-time Senate staff member who now works with the Center for Defense Information.
He claimed Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Defense Subcommittee, teamed up with ranking Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., and other lawmakers to cut more than $3 billion from the bill to make room for the earmarks.
"This is how they pay for the pork," he said. "I worked there for 30 years. I know how the operation's done."
But Inouye spokesman John Bray said the charge is false. He said the committee determined that the Pentagon's operations and maintenance request was "outdated," and that the panel provided funding "at an appropriate level that meets the critical needs of our men and women in uniform."
"The notion that the committee has somehow diverted funds needed for our troops in order to pay for 'pet projects' or other priorities is patently false. Anyone who suggests this clearly doesn't understand the appropriations process," he said in an e-mail to Foxnews.com.
A representative for Cochran could not be reached for comment.
Attempts by senators like John McCain, R-Ariz., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to strip out some of the money were unsuccessful.
"In a time of war it is unconscionable for members of Congress to divert funds from vital operations to less-than-vital parochial pork projects," Coburn said in a statement last week.
ARIZONA SHERIFF LAUNCHES CONTROVERSIAL IMMIGRATION SWEEP
An Arizona sheriff known for cracking down on people who are in the country illegally launched a crime and immigration sweep in northwestern metro Phoenix on Friday, a half day after officials in Washington limited his powers to make federal immigration arrests.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose sweeps have led to allegations of racial profiling, said the rebuff from Washington won't stop him. He said he can still arrest immigrants under a state smuggling law and a federal law that gives all local police agencies more limited power to detain suspected illegal immigrants.
"It doesn't bother me, because we are going to do the same thing," said Arpaio, whose deputies had arrested 16 people by Friday evening on unspecified charges. "I am the elected sheriff. I don't take orders from the federal government."
The officers were participating in a federal program that grants a limited number of local police departments special powers to make immigration arrests and speed up deportation. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stripped Arpaio of his power to let 100 deputies make federal immigration arrests, but renewed another agreement that allows 60 jails officers to determine the immigration status of people in jail.
The sheriff's sweeps in some heavily Latino areas of metro Phoenix have drawn criticism that Arpaio's deputies racially profile people. Arpaio said people pulled over in the sweeps were approached because deputies had probable cause to believe they had committed crimes and that it was only afterward that deputies found many of them were illegal immigrants.
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Arpaio's office over allegations of discrimination and unconstitutional searches and seizures.
"He is doing this to thumb his nose at the Obama administration," said Lydia Guzman, president of the Hispanic civil rights group Somos America.
The sweeps have discouraged some Hispanics who have witnessed or been victims of crime to refuse to call Arpaio's deputies, for fear of mistreatment, Guzman said.
Observers who are part of Guzman's group fanned out across the area of the sweeps with video cameras to record exchanges between deputies and motorists.
Arpaio said volunteers will use cameras owned by his agency to video-record deputies so viewers can see for themselves that they weren't doing anything wrong. Arpaio responded angrily to a question during a news conference about the costs of the cameras, saying they were paid through seizures in drug cases. "Dope peddlers bought the cameras," Arpaio said.
A dozen anti-Arpaio protesters yelled throughout the news conference. At one point, they chanted: "Order equals K-K-K - here's what Arpaio has to say."
Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and an advocate of expanding local immigration efforts, said Arpaio's office - like every other local police agency - can detain people suspected of immigration violations for a day or two until federal authorities come to pick them up.
In the past, Arpaio could have held such immigrants for longer than two days and conducted investigations of smuggling rings, Kobach said.
"It's really a slight narrowing, but it's not much," said Kobach, who worked as an immigration law adviser to then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft from 2001-2003.
Dan Pochoda, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing people who filed a lawsuit over the sweeps, said Arpaio still can't pull over motorists solely because they are suspected of being illegal immigrants.
"He can't do it under the terms he is claiming. He has indicated that he can stop people without the suspicion, based on what they look like, what they sound like," Pochoda said.
Arpaio said the Bush administration had no complaints about his use of the special federal powers, but all that has changed with the Obama administration.
"What's changed?" Arpaio asked. "Politics has changed, because they don't like us going on the streets to catch illegals."
This round of sweep, Arpaio's 12th, is set to end late Saturday.
(Go for it Joe! We need more like you!!)
THIS WEEK'S
Football Predictions
(I bet you are thrilled!)
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WHITE HOUSE
Seeks To Explain
Its hesitations on Afghanistan
The White House has issued its strongest warning yet that President Karzai cannot count on continued US support if he fails to accept that Afghanistan’s fraudulent election has critically undermined his authority.
Obama was said yesterday to be more concerned at "whether there’s an Afghan partner" worth defending than with the politically fraught question of how many more troops to send, according to Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff and a central figure in White House deliberations on Afghanistan.
His rare public remarks were echoed by comments from Senator John Kerry, who has flown to Kabul to join efforts to persuade Mr Karzai to either accept a second round of voting or enter a power-sharing deal with his opponent, Dr Abdullah Abdullah.
The Karzai campaign has said it will not negotiate unless the incumbent is declared the outright winner of the August election. It raised the stakes further at the weekend by continuing to defy the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission.
The commission has spent more than eight weeks examining 2,584 allegations of ballot-stuffing, phantom polling stations and police intimidation. Its findings are expected to cut the President’s lead to about 47 per cent when made public this week - a figure that would require a run-off.
Mr Emanuel and Mr Kerry are considered doves in the debate on whether to grant General Stanley McChrystal’s request for up to 40,000 more troops. But their comments reflect growing White House frustration over Mr Karzai’s refusal to compromise, despite the events of August.
"It would be reckless to make a decision on US troop levels if you haven't done a thorough analysis of whether there’s an Afghan partner ready to fill the space that US troops would create," Mr Emanuel told CNN.
Using similar language, Mr Kerry said it would be "entirely irresponsible for the President of the US to commit more troops" before the electoral process had run its course and "we know who the President is, and what kind of government we're working with".
Mr Kerry said that he believed official claims that a second vote could be arranged within two weeks, but the Afghan winter is looming. In a worst case scenario, a run-off vote could stall efforts to introduce a new American strategy until spring.
The French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, led diplomatic efforts in Kabul yesterday, meeting Mr Karzai and Dr Abdullah. He said they both expressed "a real will to work together". Scenarios discussed include a run-off before winter, a run-off in spring, or "Abdullah not competing in the run-off".
Aides to Dr Abdullah said that working with a "corrupt" Karzai government would be "like drinking dirty water" - potentially fatal. But rhetoric on both sides has softened with the arrival of Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US ambassador to the UN, with a mission to bring the sides together.
Dr Abdullah has hinted that he will talk to Mr Karzai once results are announced, while diplomats say delegations from both sides have been meeting in secret over the past week.
The UK, US and UN have all urged Mr Karzai to seek a quick and peaceful resolution.
(It might be interesting to note that Congress has indicated that Gen. McChrystal's optimal request is 80,000 troops, not the publicized 40,000. And while Obama and his butt-buddies are playing grab-ass, American GIs are being killed and wounded every damn day!)
CANADIAN PULLS BACK THE COVERS
Canadian
Editorial comments
When Obama won the Presidency with the help of the LEFTIST Media, Hollywood and Entertainment Liberals, Ethnic Socialists (ACORN), Stupid Non-Business Professionals and Bush Haters, I wrote:
It won't take 6 months until the people figure this guy out and realize how horrible a mistake they've made. And when they come to that realization, the damage to the United States of America will be so great, that it will take a generation or more to repair - IF EVER.
The IDIOTS who not only voted for the Messiah, but also worked [hard] to promote his Lordship, are now left holding the bag.
Here are two things they will NEVER do:
1 - They will NEVER admit to making a blunder out of all proportion by electing a snake-oil salesman with no positive social history or management experience of any kind.
2 - They will NEVER take responsibility for the curse they've imposed upon the immediate and long-term future of their country.
In essence, the people responsible for putting this horror-show in power are themselves responsible for every cataclysmic decision he makes and the consequences thereof.
In just 6 (SIX) months, the Messiah's polls are showing the following:
On Healthcare Reform - He's going under for the third time with polling well under 50%, even within his own Party.
Even though he might be able to muscle a Healthcare Reform Bill by using Chicago BULLY tactics against his fellow Democrats, it will just make things worse.
On Cap And Trade (Cap & Tax) - The Fat-Lady is already singing.
On the Stimulus Package (Tax and Spend) - His popularity is in FREE-FALL.
On the TARP package he took and ran with from President Bush - It's all but Good-Night Irene.
On the closing of GITMO and "HIS" war on what he no longer wants called the War On Terrorism - He's standing in quicksand with his head just about to go under.
On a comparison between himself and George W Bush at the same 6 months into their respective first term Presidencies - Bush is ahead of him in the Polls..
On a comparison between He Who Walks On Water and the 12 preceding Presidents between WW II and now - Obama ranks 10th.
On a Poll just conducted, that asks who would you vote for today between Obama and Mitt Romney - It's a dead heat..
Between Obama and Palin - Obama's ONLY ahead by 8 points and she hasn't even begun to campaign.
It seems to me that Obama wants to be everywhere where he shouldn't be.
He's personally invested in [totally insulting] America 's ONLY REAL Middle Eastern ally ( Israel ) in favor of Palestinian Despots and Murderers.
He's traveling the world apologizing for the USA while lecturing others on how to do it right, when in fact and truth, he has no experience at doing anything other than getting elected.
He went to the Moslem world in Egypt to declare that America IS NOT A CHRISTIAN NATION while he heaped praises on Islam, where he compared the "plight" of the Palestinians to the Holocaust.
The Russians think he's a Putz. The French think he's rude. The Germans want him to stop spending. The Indians want him to get his nose out of their environmental business. The North Koreans think he's a joke. The Iranians won't acknowledge his calls. And the British can't even come up with a comprehensive opinion of him.
As for the Chinese, he's too frightened to even glance their way. [After all, China now owns a large portion of the United States .]
Maybe, if America's first Emperor would stay home more and travel less, and work a little bit instead of being on television just about everyday, or forget about his Wednesday Date Nights with his Amazon Wife, or stop running to "papered" Town Hall Meetings, perhaps he would have a little bit of time to do the work of the nation.
In all fairness, it wasn't HARD to be RIGHT in my prediction concerning Obama's Presidency, even in its first 6 months, so I'm going to make yet another prediction:
OBAMA WILL PROBABLY NOT FINISH HIS 4-YEAR TERM, at least not in a conventional way.
He is such a political HORROR-SHOW, and so detrimental to the USA and his own Democratic Party, that the Democrats themselves will either FORCE him to resign or figure out a way to have him thrown out.
Who knows, maybe he really isn't a BORN US Citizen and that's a way the Democrats will be able to get rid of him. [He is a citizen, but not a naturalized citizen with both mother and father being U.S. citizens.]
Or - MORE LIKELY THAN NOT, the Democrats will make Obama THEIR OWN LAME DUCK PRESIDENT.
I don't believe the Democrats have nearly as much love for their country as they do for their own political fortunes. And with Obama, their fortunes are rapidly becoming toast..
The Democrats can keep on blaming Bush for EVERYTHING. But, that game's already begun to wear real thin.
Their mantra was "WE DON'T WANT 4 MORE YEARS", which the STUPID people bought, since McCain was nothing at all like George W Bush.
The new mantra will soon become: WE DON'T WANT 6 MORE MONTHS.
RUSH LIMBAUGH CRITIC ADMITS HE DIDN'T CHECK HIS FACTS
CNN's Rick Sanchez has apologized for falsely attributing specific racist comments to conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. Before an on-air apology, Sanchez wrote this on his Twitter page: "I've know(n) Rush. In person, I like him. His rhetoric, however is inexcusably divisive. He's right though. We didn't confirm quote. Our bad."
You have read about Limbaugh's failed attempt to become a minority owner of the NFL's Saint Louis Rams. He was dropped from the group trying to buy the team, because it said Limbaugh had become a distraction.
That came after a number of news organizations, including CNN, claimed Limbaugh once heralded the merits of slavery, and said that Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor. Limbaugh says those comments were completely fabricated adding, "they were first found on Wikipedia and it turns out that the IP address for the person who posted those quotes is a New York City law firm."
The farthest back Fox News can trace the quotes is to Jack Huberman's 2006 book, "101 People Who Are Really Screwing America." Huberman provided no source for the remarks.
9/11 FAMILIES DEMAND MILITARY TRIALS FOR GITMO DETAINEES
Mary Novotny, 72, says she never thought she'd become an activist but as the White House evaluates how to close the detention facility on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, she is riling up families of Sept. 11, 2001 victims to demand military trials for the remaining detainees.
Novotny, whose son Brian was killed while in his office on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center's north tower, told Fox News that she thinks he'd be proud she has stepped up to the plate.
"I promised Brian I would be in the courtroom for these trials if we ever got justice, that I would be there as his witness and just to sit in the courtroom was good for me to do," she said, noting she's done just that.
"The defendants never came out of their cell and we never saw them but we did see the actual courtroom and that was fulfilling for me to be in the courtroom," she said.
Novotny, a retired nurse, is now sending e-mails to other Sept. 11 families, contacting journalists for the first time in her life and has even written Obama for continuing tribunals.
"I never got a response to my letter, I don't know if he saw it, so I plan to write again though," she said, adding, "I am not very good about being interviewed, I've never been on television but it's very close to my heart."
Five Sept. 11 suspects, including alleged architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are waiting in their prison cells at Guantanamo Bay, for a decision on their fates.
The deadline is less than four weeks away and some Sept. 11 families say they are concerned they are not being heard and that the administration's decision will be a done deal with no turning back.
Novotny said their wait increases a sense of urgency. She said she is frustrated with the administration, and she is not alone.
"It was really frustrating. I didn't go in there prepared for what, how frustrated I'd be afterward, said Melissa Long, who lost her boyfriend in the terror attacks.
Long described a June meeting where the administration updated the families.
"They listened, only one of them took notes. And the rest of them took flak, they took a lot of heat there was a lot of questions gone unanswered."
Administration sources insist every effort is being made to keep the Sept. 11 families in the loop, emphasizing that Attorney General Eric Holder has personally met with the families. A Justice Department spokesman insisted every effort is being made to include the victims' families and others.
"The task forces welcome this input," reads a statement. "Capturing a wide variety of views on issues related to detention policy and Guantanamo Bay will only help the task forces make more informed decisions and recommendations."
Novotny said she thinks the administration prefers to let such an important story fly under the radar because "they want to avoid a controversy."
(What are the chances that Obama will ignore these families?
What are the chances that he will sweep this under the carpet and center his lame position on some made-up disaster that requires "immediate intervention"?
What are the chances that the American public is going to get fed-up with Obama and all his suck-ass cronies and demand that he and his friends are removed from office immediately and be subjected to criminal and civil trials?
What chance do the American people have?)
OBAMA SURROUNDS HIMSELF
With The Most Extreme Appointees
In American history
Much has been written about Obama’s controversial appointments, not only to the federal bench, but to key cabinet positions, as well as to the unaccountable (and probably unconstitutional) "Czar" positions. Much of the criticism has dwelled on the Obama administration’s lack of vetting when filling these rolls-but that’s not the issue.
To the contrary, the Obama team did investigate thoroughly and they choose precisely. When an administration repeatedly nominates hard-left individuals, it’s not a vetting error-it’s a pattern. We should not allow the media to portray these appointments as a series of errors; but rather, we need to realize that Team Obama is simply nominating those who share their goal of radically changing America.
Most Americans have a hard time understanding this because they refuse to believe Obama is this extreme. But he is. For a year prior to his election conservatives warned voters that everything we knew about Obama indicated that his views were far from the mainstream. This was obvious when one analyzed his friends, which groups he funded while a "community activist," his Illinois State Senate record, his United States Senate record and even what he wrote in his own books.
The reality, of course, is that Obama’s views are far from the mainstream and it is embarrassing so many Americans fell for his leftist candy-coated lies. Indeed, it appears that Obama is the most far left President in American history. His appointees only confirm this. These appointees hail from the crowd who regard their pedigree as the 60’s activists who cheered on the Vietcong, while American boys were slaughtered in the jungles of Vietnam. They hate America, or more precisely, they hate America’s heritage; American institutions, and the American Constitution.
Many of these extremists nominated by Obama hail from academia, where they were shielded from outside scrutiny while they quietly indoctrinated our youth. But don't let the cloak of academia fool you; they are out to change America in ways most Americans oppose. More importantly, Americans need to realize their views are Obama’s views.
The American media is partly responsible for bringing such extremists to power. There is little doubt the media engaged in a massive propaganda effort to convince Americans that Obama was some kind of hip moderate; a breath of fresh air, a reformer, and someone who would fight the corrupt ways of Washington. Until Americans wake up and stop relying on the mainstream media for their source of news, they will continue to pay a heavy price for their ignorance. Unfortunately, this report covers just a few of Obama’s policy-makers, but there are many more such extremists within his administration.
Domestic Policy:
The Regulatory Czar - Cass Sunstein
Sunstein was nominated and approved to be Obama’s "Regulatory Czar." He supports massive gun control and doesn't believe the 2nd Amendment is an individual right. He has straight out said, "We ought to ban hunting." While this fruitcake strips Americans of their Constitutional right to own guns, he wants to give rights to animals and has argued that "Animals should be permitted to bring suit..." Naturally, he also supports the "Fairness Doctrine," the wrongly-named concept which allows the government to regulate the airwaves.
Climate Czar - Todd Stern
Stern, a veteran of the Clinton administration, was the U.S. negotiator at the Kyoto conference in 1997 (which called for dramatic climate change regulations based on bogus assumptions.) Had the treaty been implemented, it would have plunged the world into economic chaos.
Since then, new evidence has revealed that the major climate models used to justify the Global Warming alarm was, in fact, not accurate. One would think Stern would address this, but chances are he won't. Climate change seems to be more about giving the government control over our lives, than about phony climate crises. Indeed, Stern has made it clear that he thinks international agencies, such as the United Nations, should take the lead on forcing climate change down the throats of national governments. Stern has even gone as far as to propose that world powers form an "E8" group, who would meet yearly and dictate environmental policy to the rest of the world. What about national sovereignty? Clearly, Stern feels that’s an outdated concept.
Stern is also the nutcase behind the Cap and Trade proposal which, even an analysis by Obama’s own Treasury Department concluded, would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion dollars-just what we need for today’s economy!
Science Czar - John Holdren
In his book, Holdren advocates some of the most bizarre and horrifying policy stances imaginable. In the event of a "over-population crises," Holdren supports "laws requiring compulsory abortion," government confiscation of new born babies, the "development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin," and, incredibly, "adding a sterilant to drinking water or stable foods...." as long a livestock would not be affected (as experimentally implemented in India). Holdren wants the government to dictate family size and advocate a "planetary regime," run by the United Nations. This real life Dr. Frankenstein will be deciding science policy for the United States of America.
Chief Diversity Officer, Federal Communications Commission - Mark Lloyd
While Obama is playing coy with his plans to shut down conservative talk radio, we know what his real intentions are, due to his appointment of Mark Lloyd. Lloyd’s view of the 1st Amendment is shocking:
"It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press.
This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references
to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination
of other communications policies. "[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect
global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance."
Like many of Obama’s appointees, Lloyd worked for George Soros, the foreign billionaire who funds anti-America groups. He seems to be enamored with dictators and has even publicly praised Venezuelan Communist dictator Hugo Chavez’s "incredible...democratic revolution." He also wants to use the Fairness Doctrine to "balance" talk radio and believes there are too many white people in the media. He has written that unless there are "more people of color, gays and other people...we will not change the problem." One of his solutions to "balance" the media is to fine conservative radio stations up to $250 million and give the proceeds to National Public Radio. Get ready for censorship like America has never seen before.
Attorney General - Eric Holder
Like most of Obama’s appointees, Holder is a member of the American Constitution Society, a ACLU-type group dedicated to destroying much the Constitution in order to make it "relevant" to the modern world. And as with many Obama’s appointees, he is obsessed with race, even to the point of refusing to pursue the prosecution of two Black Panther thugs who intimidated white voters at a polling place. The thugs were screaming things at the voters such as, "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker." If whites had harassing blacks at a polling place, they would still be sitting in a jail within days. Nevertheless, Holder apparently doesn't mind undermining the democratic process. He is currently challenging the rights of states to enact citizen verification procedures previously approved by two federal courts. In other words, Holder wants to make it easier for illegal aliens to vote, which also happens to be ACORN’s goal. This comes as no surprise; Holder has been undermining the rule of law for most of his career. While serving as the #2 official in Clinton’s Justice Department, Holder was the driving force behind the effort to pardon members of the notorious Puerto Rican terrorist group, FALN, a group that engaged in over 130 attacks in the USA, killing six people. By refusing to carry out justice against the Black Panthers and the Hispanic FALN terrorists, he was clearly pandering to these two racial groups for political reasons. So this is what Obama’s Justice Department will be all about: racial pandering first and justice last. Speaking at an ACS convention last November, Holder announced that America would soon be "run by progressives." At least he’s honest.
Deputy Attorney General - David Ogden
This appointment must have been a favor for the porn industry; Ogden has probably done more than anyone in America to defend the "rights" of pornographers. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said Ogden "is more than just a lawyer who has had a few unsavory clients. He has devoted a substantial part of his career, case after case, for 20 years, in defense of pornography." For example, he argued in support of the American Library Association when they went to court to challenge mandatory anti-obscenity Internet filters in school libraries. Incredibly, the ALA/Ogden position was that libraries should be free-speech zones in which school children should have the right to access anything they want - even pornography - on school computers.
This comes as no surprise, when Ogden was an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, he argued on constitutional grounds to strike down the conviction of a defendant who received and possessed child pornography. Ogden believes there is a constitutional right to possess child pornography. The appointment of Ogden is apparently what Obama means when he talks about promoting "family values."
Solicitor General - Elena Kagan
Elena Kagan has also been mentioned by the Obama forces as the next nomination to the Supreme Court. This is ironic considering her complete lack of judicial or appellate experience. She has never even been a judge or argued before the Supreme Court! Kagen has served as the Dean of Harvard Law School, but her job was to fundraise and make the students "comfortable." As the Boston Globe writes, "Some of her initial acts as dean were small-scale improvements, like offering free coffee in classroom buildings and free tampons in women’s bathrooms." Isn't that nice! However, the few legal views she holds are certainly far from the mainstream. She described the "don't ask, don't tell" homosexual military policy adopted by President Clinton as "a profound wrong - a moral injustice of the first order," and favors homosexuals being allowed to openly serve in the military. She argued that it was unconstitutional for Congress to withhold funds from colleges that banned military recruiters and she even took it upon herself to ban military recruiters from Harvard because of their policy regarding homosexuals. Clearly, her lesbianism has clearly created a bias that affects her shallow legal views.
Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel - Dawn Johnson
Johnson is the former legal director for the National Abortion Rights Action League, a group on the extreme left of the abortion debate. They oppose any restrictions on abortion for any reason, at any time of pregnancy-even late term abortions. She has also worked for the ACLU. Johnson has argued that abortion is all about "sexual freedom." That’s right: have sex with whoever you want and whenever you want and if you get pregnant, get an abortion. This same mentality has led to skyrocketing sexual disease rates, unwanted pregnancies, and untold sorrow. In a brief filed while working with NARAL,Johnson cited a source that said forcing women to bear children was "disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the 13th Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest." In other words, being pregnant is comparable to being a slave.
Secretary, Department of Education - Arne Duncan
Obama appointed Duncan due to his alleged success as CEO of Chicago’s public schools. However, in 2007, only 10% of black 4thgraders in Chicago reached the proficiency level in reading and for black 8th graders, only 9% reached reading proficiency. In math, only 8% of black students reached proficiency in 4th grade and just 6% reached proficiency in 8th grade. This was the disappointing outcome, despite spending $13-$14,000 per student and is among the highest of any major city.Even worse, a majority of Chicago public school students drop out or fail to graduate with their class. Needless to say, the Duncan era was a disaster. He did, however, pursue an aggressive agenda to promote the homosexual lifestyle in the schools. So Chicago kids can't read or write, but they all know how to engage in homosexual sex. If anyone tells you Duncan is an "education reformer," tell them you're the tooth fairy.
Assistant Deputy Secretary, Department of Education - Kevin Jennings
Jennings is the founder of the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a group dedicated to promoting the homosexual agenda to school children as young as five. They're sick people and even promote books that feature adult-child sex in a favorable way. Regardless, Obama must have been impressed with Jennings, as he appointed him to carry out his perverted mission nationwide in his new role as head of the Department’s "Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools."
The reality is that homosexuality is not safe; it takes years off the average lifespan of males. But for Obama, is not really about safety; it’s about keeping the homosexual community happy-after all, they helped elect him. Jennings has been in the press lately due to revelations that he gave encouraging advice to a boy who privately confessed to him he was having sex with an older man. And what was Jennings’s advice? Buy a condom. Parents, start monitoring what your schools are teaching your children. It’s going to get ugly.
Foreign Policy United States Ambassador to United Nations - Susan Rice
Even though she served on the National Security Council under President Clinton, Rice seems to have slept through the last two decades. She is fanatically pro-UN and wants the United States to work closely with the United Nations in order to carry out all kinds of humanitarian and military actions, seeming unaware that the UN has never been supportive of US interests. They don't stop wars; they don't sanction terrorist regimes, and their internal corruption is so pervasive they can't even carry out humanitarian missions. But rather than hold the UN responsible for its obvious failings over the years, Rice blamed Bush for being "unilateral" and for "stiff-arming our partners." She even sits on the board of the UN Fund for UNICEF, an agency which has been repeatedly caught giving aid to terrorists, and during the Cold War, assisting communist insurgents.
More seriously, she is overly cautious in regard to fighting terrorism. The former Ambassador to Sudan implicated Rice as the person who bungled the opportunity to take out Osama bin Laden when Sudanese officials offered him to the USA on a silver platter during the Clinton years.
She rejected their offer. There’s a good chance 9/11 could have been avoided if Rice had accepted the Sudanese offer. Apparently, even though she worked for the NSC, she didn't regard Al-Qaeda as a threat. No wonder we were hit on 9/11. And now she’s our UN Ambassador? I wonder whose interests she will serve...probably the UNs.
Counsel, State Department - Harold Koh
The man Obama has named as the State Department’s legal advisor is Harold Koh. Koh believes America should defer to the International Court of Justice to determine legal precedents; a totally unconstitutional endeavor. He is a member of the "trans-nationalism" school of legal thought that believes all distinctions between American Constitutional law and international law should vanish. Incredibly, he even believes Muslim law -Sharia law- should be applied to some disputes in US courts. Clearly, his views are in contradiction to the Constitution he swore to uphold, but no matter, he is now in charge of all legal issues for the U.S. State Department.
National Security Council - Samantha Power
Power is an anti-Israel pseudo intellectual, a strange position given that Israel is our top ally in the Middle East. She holds the view that until Israel allows Palestine to set up a separate state, all the other problems in the Middle East will remain. This, of course, ignores the 1,300 year old war of conquest waged by Islam against the West, most of it occurring long before the modern day Israel/Palestine conflict. She also holds to the conspiratorial view that everything America does in the Middle East - like the Iraq war - is due to Israeli influence.Finally, she pooh-poohs the idea that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a thoroughly discredited view in light of recent events. While she opposed sending troops to Iraq - she called it an "occupation"-she favored sending US troops to Israel to forcibly impose a Palestinian state. Power’s writing grossly exaggerates "war crimes" committed by Israel and never condemns terrorist activity by the Palestinians. The last thing we need in the midst of war between the West and Islamic terrorism is a nut on the NSC giving the President advice favoring our enemies.
Advisor, Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy - Rosa Brooks
This genius wrote that Al-Qaeda was just an "obscure group" until America began the war on terrorism, ignoring all the documentation that Al-Qaeda was making plans for rapid growth long before 9/11. Apparently, it’s America’s fault that terrorist groups exist today! She called President Bush "our torturer in chief" and compared Bush’s anti-terrorist policies to Hitler’s policies. Clearly, she ignored the fact that Bush’s policies were responsible for stopping over 17 different terrorist plots against the United States. She also called the successful surge in Iraq a "feckless plan" and seems completely blind to the successes we have had in the war on terrorism. But we shouldn't be surprised; she used to work for a foundation funded by the foreign America-hater George Soros. It’s hard to believe Brooks is now deciding defense policy.White House Staff
Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs - Valerie Jarrett
Jarrett is involved with vetting all the extremists Obama has appointed and thus, has to be an extremist as well. For example, she was aware that former Green Czar Van Jones (who withdrew) had a long history of involvement in Communist Party causes, but still said she was "delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House." She had to have known, because she married into a family with a pedigree of Communist Party involvement. Her father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, worked closely with Obama mentor and Communist Party leader Frank Marshall Davis in a number of Communist Party front groups during the Cold War years. Valerie married Vernon’s son in 1983 and later became chief of staff for Mayor Richard Daley, where she was a key player in perhaps America’s most corrupt big city political machine. Obama does not go forward with anything without her counsel.
Political advisor - David Axelrod
For those who think Axelrod is just a good campaign consultant, you couldn't be more wrong. Axelrod has a long history of working for obscure socialist candidates and Obama was no different, politically, from his other clients. In fact, promoting socialist causes was a family tradition. His mother wrote for a New York City tabloid called PM Magazine, which often promoted the Communist Party line. Indeed, author IF Stone, later revealed to be working for the KGB, was PM’s DC correspondent. Much of the tabloid’s funding came from Marshall Field, a hard left millionaire who also funded Saul Alinsky’s training school. Axelrod has spent his entire life promoting extremist candidates, but no one bothered to look into his background. Today, he advises Obama on all things political.
Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change - Carol Browner
Browner previously served as head of the EPA during the Clinton regime where she advocated incredibly stupid environmental regulations that destroyed entire industries. At a time when America is losing jobs in record numbers, she is precisely the right person for the Obama job-killing machine. Browner is a socialist and was picked by Socialist International to be one of 14 leaders of a group it created called the Commission for a Sustainable World Society. SI believes in massive wealth redistribution from the West to the Third World, choosing to ignore the evidence that Third World countries are poor due to their socialist policies.
Moreover, SI constantly attacks the free market in general and the United States in particular. The fact that Obama has chosen both Browner and Todd Stern (Climate Czar) does not bode well for the American economy. The recent disclosure that the climate models used by Browner and Stern to justify draconian new regulations - such as Cap and Trade - are based on inaccurate data, has not fazed the Obama administration one bit. For Obama, environmentalism is a tool for increasing government control and nothing else.
General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor, Office of Management & Budget - Preeta Bansal
Bansal is very close to Obama; she acts behind the scenes advising him regarding the selection of federal judges. She is on the far left side of the judicial spectrum and is a leader of the misnamed American Constitutional Society, a group that believes in a "living Constitution" and works to "debunk" the "original intent" concept. Indeed, ACS’s view that the Constitution should constantly change undermines the very purpose for having a constitution. Needless to say, the ACS is obsessed with criminal rights, illegal alien rights, terrorist rights, and other phony rights. ACS is America’s main networking group for far-left attorneys and is where Bansal is recruiting many of Obama’s judicial nominees.
Bansal is also a member of the "critical race theory (CRT)" school of legal thought that boils all legal concepts down to racist conspiracies and that racism permeates all aspects of American society. Indeed, she even co-authored a paper claiming that republicanism is based upon racist consensus. In other words, she believes the entire concept of representative democracy is based upon racist assumptions. Indeed, CRT advocates even believe the founding of America was primarily due to racial motivations.
Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals called CRT supporters the "lunatic core" of "radical legal egalitarianism." Bansal is a lunatic and her appointment will ensure that Obama’s judicial appointments will be far more about "diversity" than they will be about competence.
Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, Executive office of the President - Cecilia Munoz
Munoz is a hard-core open borders advocate who served recently as the Vice President for the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), where she supervised all legislative activities. La Raza is the nation’s foremost supporter of "rights" for illegal aliens and the granting of amnesty to the millions of illegals here in America. She does not care that illegal aliens are costing America billions of dollars; she believes they should enjoy the same rights as citizens. Not surprisingly, she served on the U.S. Programs board of the
Open Society Institute, a George Soros-funded group. You can expect Munoz to quietly push for a massive transfer of benefits and welfare to illegal aliens and for legislation granting amnesty to all those here illegally.
Director, Domestic Policy Council - Melody Barnes
Barnes is a certified wacko. She was previously Vice President of the far-left Center for American Progress and also served as Chief Counsel for Senator Ted Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Her view on abortion is so extreme, she served on the boards of both Emily’s List and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. She favors unrestricted abortions for any reason at any time of pregnancy.
Incredibly, some naïve pro-life leaders supported Obama, believing he was pro-life because he supposedly wanted to find ways to reduce abortions. Barnes has put that myth to rest. In a meeting with key pro-family leaders, Barnes made it clear that "It is not our goal to reduce the number of abortions." As reported, the room went silent.
Barnes glorifies abortion as being a "concept of liberty that includes women as equal." She has written that "reproductive rights are human rights." My guess is that the baby being aborted doesn't quite feel the same way. Needless to say, there will NOT be any pro-life measures supported by this administration. The Nation magazine praised Barnes as a "dyed-in-the-wool progressive," a nice term for a socialist. She is also a former staff member for the American Constitutional Society, the far-left legal group mentioned elsewhere.
MILMOMS.ORG VIDEO
U.S. CANNOT WAIT FOR AFGHAN ELECTION TO MAKE TROOP DECISION
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that the Obama administration cannot wait for the Afghan election to be resolved before making a decision on troop levels, appearing to be at odds with White House officials who have tied a decision on U.S. strategy to the resolution of the election and political stability.
Gates suggested the election would not have an immediate impact on the overall situation in the country.
He told reporters aboard his plane to Tokyo that the administration cannot "sit on our hands."
The comments come after Afghanistan's election commission ordered a runoff Nov. 7, following an inquiry that found thousands of ballots were fraudulent. President Hamid Karzai accepted the decision.
But White House officials, as well as Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., have suggested that U.S. strategy toward Afghanistan is contingent on political stability.
"Quite frankly, I think any credible person in this country would make a case that all the troops in the world will not solve a problem without a partner that is there ultimately to help," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday. "None of this is going to work without credible partners."
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said over the weekend that it would be "reckless" to make a decision on troop levels without doing a "thorough analysis" of whether the U.S. has a "true partner in governing."
And Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, bluntly said it would be "irresponsible" to commit more troops before the election is resolved.
These comments drew widespread criticism from Democrats and Republicans in Congress Monday. They said a runoff is important, but that U.S. military strategy is not dependent on who's leading the country.
Obama on Tuesday said he called Karzai to congratulate him on the decision to accept the runoff.
"President Karzai as well as the other candidates, I think, have shown that they have the interests of the Afghan people at heart," Obama said, following a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "This is a reflection of commitment to the rule of law."
(Again ... the White House and the Black Man are responsible for any more Red Blood spilled by American GIs in Afghanistan. They play politics while American troops are dying!
As the supposed "Commander-And-Chump" of the armed forces, I suggest that Obama and all civilians associated with the military be sent to Afghanistan as front-line troops.
Then maybe they will know what the words "...we need 80,000 more..." mean to those who are fighting and dying!
But ... since there are too few zeros, and no dollar sign associated with that number, Obama will continue to ignore it!!)
WHY LAWMAKERS
Locking Doors
Strikes a nerve
Obviously this whole "locked door" thing hit a nerve. For good reason: Locked doors, closed doors, they say a lot. In this case, not to say a lot to us.
Closed doors are meant to keep people out and a select group in.
Closed doors close off debate because they aim once and for all, to settle the debate.
When your boss's door is closed, that's bad. He's got to be up to something, right?
When it's open, he might still be - but it can't be too bad or his secrets spoken too loudly.
Because if there's a closed door meeting and you're not invited, guess what? You don't matter. Everyone else behind that door does.
Nothing makes a worker paranoid like a boss's door shut. Even if it has nothing to do with him, he immediately assumes it does. His heart races. His fears build.
That's the signal you send with a closed door. That might not be your intention, but that's the effect.
Some people ax their ways through locked doors - generally to kill people on the other side. Others open said door and find no one inside.
Neither matters because up until either door was opened, it looked bad on the outside. Because folks on the outside always want to be on the inside and they're not. And they're worried they're not.
Doubly confounding for taxpayers, because not only are we not invited, we're paying the bill for the ones who are.
Ain't that a kick? Our elected leaders telling us to shove off and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Which, of course, is impossible, because the damn thing isn't even open in the first place.
(Any time a group of our "law makers" get behind a door, or even in front of a door, everything said and seen should be taped and placed on a public (NOT GOVERNMENT) website!
We pay these assholes to do a job for us, and damnit, we are entitled to know what they are doing!!)
H1N1 RUNNING RAMPANT AMID SHORTAGE OF VACCINE
H1N1 flu is running rampant throughout the U.S., and the country will have received only 25 percent of the vaccine that was expected by the end of October, Sen. Joe Lieberman told a Senate committee hearing Wednesday.
The grim news was the focus of a special hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, at which three Cabinet secretaries were called to address the panel: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
As of last week, there were more than 5,000 cases of flu reported, compared to 7 cases in October of last year. More than 800 people have died from H1N1, including 86 children, according to the latest reports from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"It’s moved with alarming speed and took an exceptionally high toll at a time of year when we don't encounter a high number of flu cases," said Lieberman, I-Conn, who leads the Senate's homeland security committee. "Flu spikes typically occur in January. We're in October ... and the number of cases is higher than what we usually see at the flu’s peak in January."
CDC officials say there should be widespread availability of the vaccine by mid-November.
Sebelius blamed the vaccine shortage on lower than predicted yields from vaccine manufacturers and on some manufacturing "glitches" that have occurred since May. She said the yields are now more in line with original predictions and that any glitches have been corrected.
"We anticipate a robust production line moving forward," she said.
She said the vaccine that has been received by the U.S. is safe and "right on target" as far as matching the H1N1 strain that is circulating and that most people will require just one vaccination rather than the two originally predicted. Two vaccinations are recommended for children under the age of 10.
Napolitano said federal officials had assumed there would be a lag in vaccine availability and a spike in the flu, so officials are not surprised that H1N1 has spiked at a time when there is not enough vaccine available.
Sebelius said the country is working with five manufacturers to get the vaccine out to the states as quickly as possible and that within another month there should be enough vaccines available for whomever wants to get one. She said so far states have requested 11 millions doses of H1N1 vaccine and the government is shipping it out to states as it becomes available.
Updated guidance has been offered to schools, governments and the private sector on how to handle outbreaks, Napolitano said.
"We could have a surge before everyone is vaccinated and we need to keep the country moving," she said.
The words came offered little comfort to senators.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she is concerned about the lack of vaccine - her state is only set to receive another 340,000 doses next week. She’s also concerned that there’s not enough pediatric Tamiflu available. Collins said this is of particular worry because children are at high-risk for complications and death from the H1N1 flu virus.
In fact, Sebelius said half of flu hospitalizations this year have involved people under the age of 25, and 90 percent of deaths have occurred in people under the age of 65. This is the opposite of what usually happens in a typical flu season when most hospitalizations and deaths typically involve people over the age of 65.
Lieberman said he is concerned that hospitals are not equipped to handle widespread outbreaks of the virus. He said some health officials predicted as many 300,000 flu patients could require ICU treatment in hospitals this year. Typically, about 200,000 people are hospitalized with influenza each flu season, and less than half require ICU treatment.
"I'm worried the virus is getting ahead of the public health system's ability to control it," Lieberman said.
A study released Tuesday from Purdue University said it may be too late for the H1N1 vaccine to be of any benefit to Americans, as they may contract the virus before the vaccine takes effect. The study said most people would be infected during the month of October at a time when the vaccine is not available to most Americans.
Sebelius disagreed and said government health officials anticipate a spike in both seasonal and H1N1 cases going forward, not a drop off - meaning that the vaccine will not reach the majority of Americans too late. She added that even those infected with H1N1 in the spring should consider getting the vaccine once widespread availability is made.
(Since this "epidemic" is another one of Obama's fake "emergencies", who cares if there is a shortage of vaccine?
The latest I have read, from very reliable and professional medical releases have stated that more people are becoming ill and even dying from the "regular seasonal flu" than from this "swine flu".
Kind of reminds me of the last "killer flu" that Obama and his germophobes warned America about the "avian flu" and insisted that it would kill the entire population of America, or at least the Conservative Population (in their dreams)!
MILITARY FED UP WITH OBAMA
The liberal New York Times reports Tuesday that elements in the U.S. military are becoming disenchanted with Obama because he is taking so long to make a decision about sending more troops to Afghanistan.
The military is not happy right now with the commander in chief. Defense Secretary Gates, who has now publicly stated that Barack Obama must make a decision on Afghan troop deployment.
That is a bold move by Gates. He is putting his job on the line. Like Gen. McChrystal, Secretary Gates is basically putting pressure on Obama.
For his part, Obama continues to say he needs clarity from the Afghan government before he commits more American forces. And so on Tuesday, the Afghan leader Karzai says he will allow an election runoff.
But let's be honest here: The Afghan government is corrupt all day long and that's not going to change anytime soon.
The USA and NATO are fighting to destroy terrorism, to deprive the Taliban and Al Qaeda of sanctuaries. We are not fighting for the Afghan government.
The best case scenario is for the Afghan army to become a force against the terrorists. It could happen, but it won't unless more security is provided by the USA. That's why Gen. McChrystal wants the additional troops.
In the end I believe Obama will send the soldiers and Marines, but his hesitation is teeing off the military. It's also helping the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Those people will fight if they believe they can outlast America, and all this dithering around has to give them encouragement.
One final thought: If Obama sincerely believes that the Afghan government is so corrupt and the theater is so out of control that it's impossible to win the fight, then he should say that and get out. I'll support that. President Bush took a huge gamble by surging in Iraq. It worked, but it may not work in Afghanistan.
But one way or the other, Obama needs to act now.
(Hey, Obama! Either shit or get off the pot!!
If you can't do the job that you lied your way into, get the fuck out and let someone who knows what the hell they are doing get on with correcting all the damage you have done!
Trouble is, the only person I feel is qualified isn't in D.C. right now ... he's in Saint Marie, Montana!!!)
MAN ARRESTED FOR NUDITY IN HIS OWN HOME
A man is facing an indecent exposure charge after a passerby spotted him naked in his own kitchen.
Twenty-nine-year-old Eric Williamson is a commercial diver who grew up in Hawaii and rents his home with several co-workers. Williamson said his roommates were not home and he walked into the kitchen to make coffee about 5:30 a.m. Monday.
At about that time, an unidentified woman walking with a seven-year-old boy passed the front yard of Williamson's home.
A Fairfax County Police spokesman said officers arrested Williamson for indecent exposure because they believe he wanted to be seen naked by the public. Officer Bud Walker said officers also consulted the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office and they were given the green light to proceed with the charge.
Williamson, who is father of a five-year old girl, says he's the victim. Now he's meeting with a lawyer to fight the charge and may attempt to seek damages from Fairfax County Police.
If convicted on the misdemeanor charge, he would face up to one year in jail and a two-thousand dollar fine.
(What a bunch of bullshit! If I wanna run naked in my own home, that is my business.
And just what the hell was the woman and kid doing at 5:30 in the morning peeking into someone's home?)
CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS JOIN CONSERVATIVES TO OPPOSE NET NEUTRALITY
Two groups of House Democrats that are not always on the same political page have joined forces to oppose federal regulation of Internet traffic currently under consideration by the Federal Communications Commission.
The FCC is moving forward with plans to approve "net neutrality," rules that essentially would prohibit Internet service providers from charging add-on fees to certain Web sites for accessing their networks. Advocates of net neutrality argue that without new rules, a duopoly of cable and telephone companies can "discriminate" against certain Web content.
But 72 House Democrats, all members of either the centrist Blue Dog Caucus or the more liberal Congressional Black Caucus, signed a letter to the FCC charging that "net neutrality" regulations would stifle competition.
"We remain suspicious of conclusions based on slogans rather than substance, and of policies that restrict and inhibit the very innovation and growth that we all seek to achieve," the members of each caucus said in a joint letter to the FCC last Thursday.
Opponents of the regulations say the rules would likely slow down the Web, make it tougher to block spam, create the need for more government bureaucrats as new bureaucratic rules tend to require, and discourage investment in broadband technology...
The letter from Democratic House members last week used some of the same arguments Republicans have advanced.
"A decade ago, broadband was a nascent service, and only one percent of US households connected to the Internet through broadband lines," the letter from Democratic lawmakers said. "Today, by contrast, roughly two-thirds of Americans connect through high speed connections that are available to 95 percent of households."
Signatories included prominent Democrats such as Reps. Health Shuler (D-NC), Sheila Jackson Lee (P-TX), Bernie Thompson (D-MS), Baron Hill (D-IN), Ed Towns (D-NY), Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), and Alcee Hastings (P-FL).
"While we have further to go as a nation in extending the benefits of broadband to all, it is our strong belief that continued progress in expanding the reach and capabilities of broadband networks will require the commission to reiterate, and not repudiate, its historic commitment to competition, private investment and a restrained regulatory approach," the letter continued.
Supporters of net neutrality rules include the left-wing MoveOn.org and the media reform group Free Press.
(Actually, "net neutrality" is not what is described above!
It is an attempt by Obama and his butt-buddies to remove any website that posts opinions that are anti-Obama!
That's right ... Obama and his czars almost totally control radio, television, printed press, educational brain-washing, and now wants to control the Internet!
If this is passed, stevespages.com will move rapidly to the top of the hit list. 90% of my political postings are anti-Obama ... and I have the First Amendment to guarantee that I have the right to post them!
The asshole in D.C. are doing their best to neuter the Bill Of Rights!
They are actively attempting to nullify the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments!
But, I guess that should be expected from a Marxist!!!)
ONE HELL
Of A
Politician!
Vermont State Rep. Fred Maslack has read the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as Vermont 's own Constitution very carefully, and his strict interpretation of these documents is popping some eyeballs in New England and elsewhere.
Maslack recently proposed a bill to register "non-gun-owners" and require them to pay a $500 fee to the state. Thus Vermont would become the first state to require a permit for the luxury of going about unarmed and assess a fee of $500 for the privilege of not owning a gun Maslack read the "militia" phrase of the Second Amendment as not only affirming the right of the individual citizen to bear arms, but as a clear mandate to do so. He believes that universal gun ownership was advocated by the Framers of the Constitution as an antidote to a "monopoly of force" by the government as well as criminals Vermont 's constitution states explicitly that "the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State" and those persons who are "conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms" shall be required to "pay such equivalent." Clearly, says Maslack, Vermonters have a constitutional obligation to arm themselves, so that they are capable of responding to "any situation that may arise."
Under the bill, adults who choose not to own a firearm would be required to register their name, address, Social Security Number, and driver's license number with the state. "There is a legitimate government interest in knowing who is not prepared to defend the state should they be asked to do so," Maslack says Vermont already boasts a high rate of gun ownership along with the least restrictive laws of any state .. it's currently the only state that allows a citizen to carry a concealed firearm without a permit. This combination of plenty of guns and few laws regulating them has resulted in a crime rate that is the third lowest in the nation "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
This makes sense! There is no reason why gun owners should have to pay taxes to support police protection for people not wanting to own guns. Let them contribute their fair share and pay their own way.
SNATCHING DEFEAT
From The
Jaws of victory ... again!
Never since the mid 1970s when the Watergate Congress insisted on abandoning our South Vietnamese allies after the war had been won have I seen defeat snatched from the jaws of victory in such a bold and decisive manner.
As I survey the scene in America today I'm beginning to wonder if we would be in any worse shape if we'd lost the Cold War. From sea to shining sea Americans watch as the once greatest industrial nation on earth board up our factories and ship our manufacturing capacity to other countries. It seems like every other day the last investigative journalist in America, Glenn Beck is exposing one more Marxist in President Obama’s inner circle. That big lovable fuzz-ball Rush Limbaugh is judged a racist based on manufactured quotes and lies repeated by the President’s trained peacock and the rest of the establishment media while America watches accusations of racism used to squash any criticism of Barak H*@%$*n Obama. Freedom of speech dissolves as we learn it’s profiling for some to mention the man’s middle name while at the same time school children are taught to memorize songs using his middle name extolling his Nobel sized accomplishments, mmm mmm mmm.
Like Iran we're nearing critical mass. With uninformed voters not knowing know who they're voting for and uninformed politicians not knowing what they're voting for does anyone wonder why America’s in trouble? It was bad when our elected representatives voted for bills they haven't read now under the inspired leadership of San Francisco Nancy Pelosi and Dingy Harry Reid they're voting for bills they haven't written yet. In their infinite wisdom they've figured out how to score a bill evaluating its impact on our budget before the official language meets the paper, now that’s economy of effort.
At least according to the corporations once known as the Mainstream Media the Great Recession is finally over. And at least according to Never-had-a-real-job-in-his life Joe Biden the stimulus is working better than expected. After diligent searching I've finally located those shovel-ready jobs the perpetually re-elected dangled in front of our eyes so we wouldn't pass-out when they coughed up 787 billion of our dollars so that unemployment wouldn't get over 8%. After driving past two miles of orange cones and seeing nothing but perfectly good road and a few guys using shovels as partners to dance the Chitown Hustle I came upon one of those $2000 "Putting America to Work" signs that informed me the whole thing was a snow job and the only shovel-ready thing about it was the politicians ready to shovel the billions to their pet interest groups to buy votes.
People who once had good paying jobs are selling lotto tickets at the Quick-i-Mart to people who still believe that’s their only hope for change. By the time the dust settles how many of us will be standing in front of our boarded-up economy asking, "Brother Can You Spare Some Change?" The President says he is looking at any way possible to create jobs. How about setting America free and getting out of the way? Does anyone doubt that if the Federal Government declared an income tax holiday and let everyone keep their gross for a year they wouldn't spend it? Does anyone doubt if corporate taxes were cut and capital gains lowered people wouldn't invest in expansion? Does any doubt that if we were allowed to choose any insurance company we wanted and there was real tort reform medical insurance rates wouldn't go down?
This isn't rocket science it’s political science and economics two arcane pseudo-sciences that just about anyone who takes the time to read can understand. Free people in a free economy will outperform any collectivist regime ever devised no matter how many songs praising the Dear Leader the school children learn to sing. Remember the Cold War? The Communists with their bureaucratically strangled centrally-planned command economy said they would bury us while their workers joked, "They pretend to pay us so we pretend to work." Instead our capitalistic system of individual freedom and personal opportunity buried them. We won the war and declared a peace-dividend we wasted playing policeman of the world nation-building for people who hate us. Today, with our economy on the ropes mired in wars we refuse to win, with our industry exported or government-owned people ask "Who won what?" The Soviets also said our own grandchildren would raise the red flag from the White House. They may not have raised a flag but the place is now filled with Marxist advisors and a media-made messiah president who listens to them. Who won Communism or Capitalism? In America today that may be a difference without a distinction a place where honesty forces us to say if there’s no difference there’s no difference.
OBAMA LOSES BID TO EXCLUDE FOX NEWS FROM PAY CZAR INTERVIEW
The Obama administration on Thursday failed in its attempt to exclude Fox News from participating in an interview of an administration official, as Republicans on Capitol Hill stepped up their criticism of the hardball tactics employed by the White House.
The Treasury Department on Thursday tried to make "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg available for interviews to every member of the network pool except Fox News. The pool is the five-network rotation that for decades has shared the costs and duties of daily coverage of the presidency and other Washington institutions.
But the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks consulted and decided that none of their reporters would interview Feinberg unless Fox News was included. The pool informed Treasury that Fox News, as a member of the network pool, could not be excluded from such interviews under the rules of the pool.
The administration relented, making Feinberg available for all five pool members and Bloomberg TV.
The pushback came after White House senior adviser David Axelrod told ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday that Fox News is not a real news organization and other news networks "ought not to treat them that way."
Media analysts cheered the decision to boycott the Feinberg interview unless Fox News was included, saying the administration's gambit was taking its feud with Fox News too far. President Obama has already declined to go on "Fox News Sunday," even while appearing on the other Sunday shows.
"I'm really cheered by the other members saying "No, if Fox can't be part of it, we won't be part of it,'" said Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik, calling the move to limit Feinberg's availability "outrageous."
"What it's really about to me is the Executive Branch of the government trying to tell the press how it should behave. I mean, this democracy -- we know this -- only works with a free and unfettered press to provide information," he said.
Several top White House advisers have appeared on other news channels to criticize Fox News' coverage of the administration, dismiss the network as the mouthpiece of the Republican Party and urge other news organizations not to treat Fox News as a legitimate news network.
On Wednesday, Obama, speaking publicly for the first time about his administration's portrayal of Fox News as illegitimate, said he's not "losing sleep" over the controversy.
"I think that what our advisers simply said is, is that we are going to take media as it comes," Obama said when asked about his advisers targeting the network openly. "And if media is operating, basically, as a talk radio format, then that's one thing. And if it's operating as a news outlet, then that's another. But it's not something I'm losing a lot of sleep over."
Obama's comments also came after he met Monday with political commentators Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC; Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post; Ron Brownstein of the National Journal; John Dickerson of Slate; Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd and Bob Herbert of the New York Times; Jerry Seib of the Wall Street Journal, Gloria Borger of CNN and U.S. News and World Report, and Gwen Ifill of PBS.
House Republican leaders rushed to the defense of conservative commentators Thursday after the president's comments.
Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said conservative commentators speak more for Americans than the national media outlets that have targeted them for criticism.
"Goaded on by a White House increasingly intolerant of criticism, lately the national media has taken aim at conservative commentators in radio and television," the Indiana Republican said on the House floor. "Suggesting that they only speak for a small group of activists and even suggesting in one report today that Republicans in Washington are 'worried about their electoral effect.' Well, that's hogwash."
(About time someone started slapping-down the White House! I hope this isn't a singular event...)
THIS WEEK'S
Football Predictions
(I bet you are thrilled!)
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THE FIRST 100 THINGS
To Run Out
In an emergency
1. Generators (good ones cost dearly. Gas storage, risky. Noisy...target of thieves; maintenance etc.)
2. Water filters/purifiers
3. Portable toilets
4. Seasoned firewood. Wood takes about 6 - 12 months to become dried, for home uses.
5. Lamp oil, wicks, lamps (first choice: buy clear oil. If scarce, stockpile any!)
6. Coleman fuel. Impossible to stockpile too much.
7. Guns, ammunition, pepper spray, knives, clubs, bats & slingshots.
8. Hand-can openers, & hand egg beaters, whisks.
9. Honey/syrups/white, brown sugar
10. Rice - beans - wheat
11. Vegetable oil (for cooking) without it food burns/must be boiled etc.,)
12. Charcoal, lighter fluid (will become scarce suddenly)
13. Water containers (urgent item to obtain.) any size. Small: hard clear plastic only - note - food grade if for drinking.
14. Mini heater head (propane) (without this item, propane won't heat a room.)
15. Grain grinder (non-electric)
16. Propane cylinders (urgent: definite shortages will occur.
17. Survival guide book.
18. Mantles: aladdin, coleman, etc. (Without this item, longer-term lighting is difficult.)
19. Baby supplies: diapers/formula. Ointments/aspirin, etc.
20. Washboards, mop bucket w/wringer (for laundry)
21. Cookstoves (propane, coleman & kerosene)
22. Vitamins
23. Propane cylinder handle-holder (urgent: small canister use is dangerous without this item)
24. Feminine hygiene/haircare/skin products.
25. Thermal underwear (tops & bottoms)
26. Bow saws, axes and hatchets, wedges (also, honing oil)
27. Aluminum foil reg. & Heavy duty (great cooking and barter item)
28. Gasoline containers (plastic & metal)
29. Garbage bags (impossible to have too many).
30. Toilet paper, kleenex, paper towels
31. Milk - powdered & condensed (shake liquid every 3 to 4 months)
32. Garden seeds (non-hybrid) (a must)
33. Clothes pins/line/hangers (a must)
34. Coleman's pump repair kit
35. Tuna fish (in oil)
36. Fire extinguishers (or..large box of baking soda in every room)
37. First aid kits
38. Batteries (all sizes...buy furthest-out for expiration dates)
39. Garlic, spices & vinegar, baking supplies
40. Big dogs (and plenty of dog food)
41. Flour, yeast & salt
42. Matches. {"Strike anywhere" preferred.) boxed, wooden matches will go first
43. Writing paper/pads/pencils, solar calculators
44. Insulated ice chests (good for keeping items from freezing in wintertime.)
45. Workboots, belts, levis & durable shirts
46. Flashlights/lightsticks & torches, "no. 76 Dietz" lanterns
47. Journals, diaries & scrapbooks (jot down ideas, feelings, experience; historic times)
48. Garbage cans plastic (great for storage, water, transporting - if with wheels)
49. Men's hygiene: shampoo, toothbrush/paste, mouthwash/floss, nail clippers, etc
50. Cast iron cookware (sturdy, efficient)
51. Fishing supplies/tools
52. Mosquito coils/repellent, sprays/creams
53. Duct tape
54. Tarps/stakes/twine/nails/rope/spikes
55. Candles
56. Laundry detergent (liquid)
57. Backpacks, duffel bags
58. Garden tools & supplies
59. Scissors, fabrics & sewing supplies
60. Canned fruits, veggies, soups, stews, etc.
61. Bleach (plain, not scented: 4 to 6% sodium hypochlorite)
62. Canning supplies, (jars/lids/wax)
63. Knives & sharpening tools: files, stones, steel
64. Bicycles...tires/tubes/pumps/chains, etc
65. Sleeping bags & blankets/pillows/mats
66. Carbon monoxide alarm (battery powered)
67. Board games, cards, dice
68. D-con rat poison, mouse prufe ii, roach killer
69. Mousetraps, ant traps & cockroach magnets
70. Paper plates/cups/utensils (stock up, folks)
71. Baby wipes, oils, waterless & antibacterial soap (saves a lot of water)
72. Rain gear, rubberized boots, etc.
73. Shaving supplies (razors & creams, talc, after shave)
74. Hand pumps & siphons (for water and for fuels)
75. Soysauce, vinegar, bullions/gravy/soupbase
76. Reading glasses
77. Chocolate/cocoa/tang/punch (water enhancers)
78. "Survival-in-a-can"
79. Woolen clothing, scarves/ear-muffs/mittens
80. Boy scout handbook, / also leaders catalog
81. Roll-on window insulation kit (manco)
82. Graham crackers, saltines, pretzels, trail mix/jerky
83. Popcorn, peanut butter, nuts
84. Socks, underwear, t-shirts, etc. (Extras)
85. Lumber (all types)
86. Wagons & carts (for transport to and from)
87. Cots & inflatable mattress's
88. Gloves: work/warming/gardening, etc.
89. Lantern hangers
90. Screen patches, glue, nails, screws,, nuts & bolts
91. Teas
92. Coffee
93. Cigarettes
94. Wine/liquors (for bribes, medicinal, etc,)
95. Paraffin wax
96. Glue, nails, nuts, bolts, screws, etc.
97. Chewing gum/candies
98. Atomizers (for cooling/bathing)
99. Hats & cotton neckerchiefs
100. Goats/chickens
FROM A SARAJEVO WAR SURVIVOR:
Experiencing horrible things that can happen in a war - death of parents and friends, hunger and malnutrition, endless freezing cold, fear, sniper attacks.
1. Stockpiling helps, but you never no how long trouble will last, so locate near renewable food sources.
2. Living near a well with a manual pump is like being in Eden.
3. After awhile, even gold can lose its luster. But there is no luxury in war quite like toilet paper. Its surplus value is greater than gold's.
4. If you had to go without one utility, lose electricity - it's the easiest to do without (unless you're in a very nice climate with no need for heat.)
5. Canned foods are awesome, especially if their contents are tasty without heating. One of the best things to stockpile is canned gravy - it makes a lot of the dry unappetizing things you find to eat in war somewhat edible. Only needs enough heat to "warm", not to cook. It's cheap too, especially if you buy it in bulk.
6. Bring some books - escapist ones like romance or mysteries become more valuable as the war continues. Sure, it's great to have a lot of survival guides, but you'll figure most of that out on your own anyway - trust me, you'll have a lot of time on your hands.
7. The feeling that you're human can fade pretty fast. I can't tell you how many people I knew who would have traded a much needed meal for just a little bit of toothpaste, rouge, soap or cologne. Not much point in fighting if you have to lose your humanity. These things are morale-builders like nothing else.
8. Slow burning candles and matches, matches, matches.
OBAMA DECLARES H1N1 FLU 'NATIONAL EMERGENCY'
Obama signed a proclamation declaring the H1N1 influenza a national emergency, giving doctors and medical facilities greater leeway in responding to the flu pandemic.
Obama signed the declaration late Friday, which the White House said allows medical treatment facilities to better handle a surge in flu patients by waiving federal requirements on a case-by-case basis.
"The foundation of our national approach to the H1N1 flu has been preparedness at all levels -- personal, business, and government -- and this proclamation helps that effort by advancing our overall response capability," the White House said in a statement.
In the proclamation, Obama said the pandemic keeps evolving, the rates of illness are rising rapidly in many areas and there's a potential "to overburden health care resources."
Because of vaccine production delays, the government has backed off initial, optimistic estimates that as many as 120 million doses would be available by mid-October. As of Wednesday, only 11 million doses had been shipped to health departments, doctor's offices and other providers, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The government now hopes to have about 50 million doses of vaccine for the so-called swine flu out by mid-November and 150 million in December.
The flu virus has to be grown in chicken eggs, and the yield hasn't been as high as was initially hoped, officials explained.
H1N1 is more widespread now than it's ever been. Health authorities say almost 100 children have died from the flu, and 46 states now have widespread flu activity.
Worldwide, more than 5,000 people have reportedly died from swine flu since it emerged this year and developed into a global epidemic, the World Health Organization said Friday. Since most countries have stopped counting individual swine flu cases, the figure is considered an underestimate.
The flu has infected millions of Americans and killed nearly 100 children in the U.S. The chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that over a thousand people have died as a result, with 46 states reporting widespread H1N1 activity.
"Since the beginning of the pandemic, we've seen more than 1,000 deaths and 20,000 hospitalizations," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the CDC. "We expect it to occur in waves, but we can't predict when those waves will happen."
(Well...I told ya so!
Obama has come up with another "emergency" in order to side-step the real situations that require his immediate action!
The assholes in D.C. are quick to announce the 1,000 deaths from the supposed flu, however, they are extremely hesitant in stating the conditions under which these deaths occurred!
What conditions? How about the age of the patient; was the patient suffering from any other "deadly disease"; was the patient's immune system compromised; what was the general health status of the patient?
Even the common cold will "kill" the very young, the very old, the immuno-suppressed, and those with other serious health conditions!
Instead of taking care of what he can take care of (namely the request for 80,000 more troops in Afghanistan that was requested over 2 months ago) he has once again created a "disaster" that neither he, nor anyone else, can, at any time, correct!
Time for Obama to stop fighting windmills and get down to what he was elected to do! Or, get the hell outta the way of someone who can!!)
OBAMA'S 'CZARS' WON'T TESTIFY
The White House has told Congress it will reject calls for many of Obama's policy czars to testify before Congress - a decision senators said goes against the president's promises of transparency and openness and treads on Congress' constitutional mandate to investigate the administration's actions.
Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, said White House counsel Greg Craig told her in a meeting Wednesday that they will not make available any of the czars who work in the White House and don't have to go through Senate confirmation. She said he was "murky" on whether other czars outside of the White House would be allowed to come before Congress.
Miss Collins said that doesn't make sense when some of those czars are actually making policy or negotiating on behalf of Obama.
"I think Congress should be able to call the president's climate czar, Carol Browner, the energy and environment czar, to ask her about the negotiations she conducted with the automobile industry that led to very significant policy changes with regard to emissions standards," Miss Collins said at a hearing Thursday that examined the proliferation of czars.
The debate goes to the heart of weighty constitutional issues about separation of powers. Obama argues that he should be allowed to have advisers who are free to give him confidential advice without having to fear being called to testify about it. Democrats and Republicans in Congress, though, argue that those in office who actually craft policy should be able to be summoned to testify because they do more than just give Obama advice.
At issue are the 18 positions Miss Collins says Obama has created since he took office. Of those, she says 10 - the White House says eight - are in the executive office and not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests or requests for testimony.
Czar is an informal term given to the positions.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent and chairman of the government affairs committee, asked the White House to provide a witness for Thursday's hearing but it did not send one.
In a letter last week to Miss Collins, though, Mr. Craig explained that the White House is not trying to circumvent Congress.
"We recognize that it is theoretically possible that a president could create new positions that inhibit transparency or undermine congressional oversight. That is simply not the case, however, in the current administration," Mr. Craig wrote.
Mr. Craig said the new positions Obama has created within the White House "are solely advisory in nature" and have no independent authority.
Senators disagreed with that evaluation, pointing to Mrs. Browner and health care czar Nancy-Ann DeParle, who is Obama's health care adviser.
"We do happen to have a Cabinet officer with Health and Human Services with whom I have never had a conversation on health care, not because I have any opposition to her but because it's my perception Nancy-Ann DeParle is calling the shots," said Sen. Robert F. Bennett, Utah Republican.
Criticism of czars has boiled over after talk-show host Glenn Beck - who senators at the hearing repeatedly referred to as "he who shall not be named" - began a campaign to highlight their proliferation in the Obama administration. But Miss Collins said she's been looking at czars for months, and she doesn't have problems with many of the czars Mr. Beck has criticized.
Still, Mr. Craig spent two pages of his four-page letter to Miss Collins critiquing Mr. Beck's positions.
Legal experts testifying before the Senate panel said Congress needs to be careful not to overreach in reacting. They said options open to lawmakers include writing new laws to restrict advisers' authority or writing the positions into law as needing Senate confirmation. A White House aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they are trying to work to accommodate "all reasonable congressional requests for information" and said some White House advisers have given informal briefings to members of Congress in lieu of testimony.
The aide also said some czars are outside the White House itself and they can be called to testify. The aide said five of them have already done so.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat, blasted Republicans for raising the issue and said she took offense at their comparisons between Obama and President Nixon.
She said Congress should instead be looking at the legality of presidential signing statements to shape how laws are implemented - a tool whose use expanded substantially under President George W. Bush.
Last month, Miss Collins offered an amendment to compel administration officials to testify, but it was ruled not germane to the bill being debate.
Democrats said it went too far because it would have covered all executive branch employees, including the national security adviser and the chief of staff, who have always been recognized as out of bounds.
Miss Collins said the issue shouldn't be so intractable and that Congress and the White House should be able to agree on a list of people who should be able to testify.
For his part, Mr. Lieberman said he's still looking for a good solution.
"We both share a desire to do something about this to help Congress uphold our responsibility for oversight, but we understand the balance here as reflected in the Constitution," he said.
(If they are making policy, WHICH THEY ARE, and they HAVE NOT BEEN ELECTED by the American people, WHICH THEY HAVEN'T, they should not only have to answer to Congress and the American people, but should be removed, IMMEDIATELY, from all government positions and locations!)
NOTHING
Worth Writing About
Today
GMAC
In Talks
For 3rd round of US hand-out!
GMAC, the former lending arm of General Motors Co., is in talks with the Treasury Department for a third injection of taxpayer aid, a further sign of the U.S. government's entrenchment in the U.S. auto industry.
The Treasury Department mandated earlier this year that GMAC Financial Services raise an additional $11.5 billion in capital after undergoing a "stress test" along with 18 other banks. While other banks deemed undercapitalized have been able to raise funds from private investors, GMAC has been forced to go back to the government.
GMAC is a crucial player in the U.S. auto industry, providing wholesale financing to many General Motors and Chrysler dealerships to pay for the vehicles on their lots. The company also operates a mortgage lending unit - Residential Capital - which has been pummeled by the housing market downturn. It also runs an insurance unit and an online banking unit called Ally Bank.
A Treasury Department spokesman confirmed that it was in talks with GMAC about a third helping of aid. The government already owns a 35 percent stake in GMAC after providing $12.5 billion to the lender. It also owns a majority-stake in GM and a smaller stake in Chrysler.
The Treasury spokesman declined to comment on whether the government's ownership stakes in GM and Chrysler make it more willing to again help prop up GMAC. But Kirk Ludtke, a senior vice president of CRT Capital Group LLC in Stamford, Conn., who follows GMAC, said the automakers can't succeed without GMAC.
"We continue to believe that a viable GMAC is critical to the success of GM and Chrysler," Ludtke said.
Citing people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal first reported late Tuesday that the U.S. government could hand over another $2.8 billion to $5.6 billion to Detroit-based GMAC. The latest capital infusion would be in the form of preferred stock, the paper said. The government's stake could rise if the new preferred shares were ever converted into common stock.
A GMAC spokeswoman declined to comment.
Of the 19 banks that underwent the government's stress tests, 10 were determined to be undercapitalized. GMAC is the only one of those unable to raise all of its necessary capital from investors.
Treasury's move would make GMAC the only U.S. company to receive three rounds of bailout aid. Last December, the government gave GMAC $5 billion in exchange for 5 million shares and GMAC's agreement to extend financing services to bailed-out Chrysler LLC. Then in May, the Treasury Department announced a new $7.5 billion injection for GMAC - short of the $11.5 billion the government's stress test showed the company would need to stay afloat if the economy worsens.
To help GMAC raise the remaining capital, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took the rare step earlier this year of allowing the junk-rated company to gain access to the FDIC's debt guarantee program. The FDIC agreed to guarantee up to $7.4 billion in GMAC-issued debt in case the company defaulted on payment, and has already backed about $4.5 billion worth.
According to the paper, the FDIC told GMAC Tuesday that it would guarantee the remaining $2.9 billion in debt to prevent the company from being forced to reduce its lending volume.
GMAC in August posted a wider second-quarter loss of $3.9 billion. Midway through the quarter, GMAC became the preferred lender for Chrysler. Last week, the Treasury Department informed Chrysler's former lender, Chrysler Financial, that it would have to shut down by the end of 2011.
(Another $8-BILLION going to GM?
About time to just shut their doors and sell-off the buildings for whatever they can be sold for!)
DOES CONGRESS HAVE ITS PRIORITIES STRAIGHT?
Working Hard or Hardly Working?
The House of Representatives has taken heat lately for its three-day workweeks. But now some are questioning just how much important work is getting done when lawmakers do show up.
On Tuesday, the House took up a resolution sponsored by Texas Democrat Al Green honoring the birthday of Confucius. It was eventually postponed. Tuesday's floor schedule also included a non-binding procedural vote along with various resolutions including one to welcome the archbishop of Constantinople on his visit to the U.S.
The Washington Times reports that House Minority Leader John Boehner complained that Democrats would rather "celebrate the birth of an ancient Chinese philosopher" than debate plans for jobs and health care with Republicans.
Last week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer noted, "We're doing a lot of work. It just happens it's not on the floor."
(Three days a week?
Hey, for what they are accomplishing, that is okay by me.
Just chop 40% off their salaries and expenses!!)
LIEBERMAN: I'LL BACK A FILIBUSTER SENATE HEALTHCARE BILL
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said Tuesday that he'd back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s healthcare reform bill.
Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program - even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid has said the Senate bill will.
"We're trying to do too much at once," Lieberman said. "To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don't think we need it now."
Asked about Lieberman’s threat to filibuster a final vote on the Reid plan, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said: "I haven't seen the report from Sen. Lieberman or why he's saying what he's saying. I think Democrats and Republicans alike will be held accountable by their constituents who want to see health care reform enacted this year."
Lieberman said that he'd vote against a public option plan "even with an opt-out because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line."
His comments confirmed that Reid is short of the 60 votes needed to advance the bill out of the Senate, even after Reid included the opt-out provision. Several other moderate Democrats expressed skepticism at the proposal as well, but most of the wavering Democratic senators did not go as far as Lieberman Tuesday, saying they were waiting to see the details.
Lieberman did say he's "strongly inclined" to vote to proceed to the debate, but that he'll ultimately vote to block a floor vote on the bill if it isn't changed first. "I've told Sen. Reid that if the bill stays as it is now I will vote against cloture," he said.
"I can't see a way in which I could vote for cloture on any bill that contained a creation of a government-operated-run insurance company," Lieberman added. "It’s just asking for trouble - in the end, the taxpayers are going to pay and probably all people who have health insurance are going to see their premiums go up because there’s going to be cost shifting as there has been for Medicare and Medicaid."
ARES LAUNCH A SUCCESS
IS FREE SPEECH
Being Muzzled
In America?
Obama, who is sitting in the Oval Office right now promised to bring us "hope" and "change." Barack Obama is keeping at least one of those promises: change. But it's not the kind of change millions of you voted for.
This nation is being fundamentally transformed; Obama promised us in his own words he would transform it. What we didn't know was how and just how much.
One way this administration and its helpers are doing it is by systematically stripping away our right to free speech. Yes, Obama and other progressives profess to be the saviors of our First Amendment rights.
But when you pull back the curtain, you will see that free speech is being eradicated for controlled speech: Control over the media; control over the Internet; control over you.
One of the groups behind all this is Free Press.
I was struck first by their motto: "Free Press. Reform media. Transform democracy."
I didn't realize democracy needed transforming. But anyway, you'll remember that Free Press is the group pushing net neutrality, which would take the Internet out of the hands of private business and put it into the hands of government. That would create a level-playing field, which would destroy the free market that... created the Internet. But hey, you know how those evil corporations are: Always trying to be successful and make money. So evil.
Free Press is also behind SaveTheNews.org, which is "leading the search for new public policies to save journalism and to promote a robust free press in America."
Hmm, policies? Policies like a government bailout for journalism? How exactly does that "promote a robust free press"?
But on to Public Broadcasting. Executive director Josh Silver's position paper "Public Media's Moment" spells out to Obama how to take advantage: "The growing crisis facing commercial journalism and public media's unique ability to address it... makes such reform all the more urgent... you have a rare opportunity to achieve real change and reinvent public media."
Adding: "Just as the economic crisis has put an end to free market fundamentalism, so too should the failure of commercial media to adequately serve the public interest end the myth that government has no role in fulfilling society's information needs."
You see how the White House's "Fox isn't a real news organization" comments make more sense now, right?
Silver calls on Obama to create a White House commission on public media to provide policy recommendations. And how do we pay for it? Silver points out that currently only $400 million per year goes to public media. He recommends a media trust fund, starting with $50 billion, more money from Congress or - wait for it - a tax on electronics:
"A tax of 0.5 percent of the purchase price for every home electronic device: multimedia players, cable and satellite set-top boxes, video game systems, televisions, etc. those devices that entertain America would in turn be supporting programming to inform, educate and enlighten. And the fee would be paid by those consumers with the means to spend on new electronics."
Those consumers "with the means"? That means "rich" people. Higher taxes and this will not increase the deficit by one thin dime.
Step one: Shut down the speech they don't like. But, since nature abhors a vacuum, the question is: What do they fill the space with?
FORUM IS NOT AVAILABLE
The Forum is not available. I'm not sure if it will return.
When the servers were moved from California to Florida all of stevespages was trashed!
I have managed to get the main pages operational once again, but the database in the forum is totally fucked!
THIS WEEK'S
Football Predictions
(I bet you are thrilled!)
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DID YOU SET YOUR CLOCKS BACK?
ANOTHER
Failed
Presidency
Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.
In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.
George Bush Jr didn't fail so much as he was perceived to have been too much of a patrician while being uncomfortable with his more conservative allies. Yet George Bush Sr is still perceived as a man of uncommon decency, loyal to the enduring American character of rugged self-determination, free markets, and generosity. George W will eventually be treated more kindly by historians as one whose potential was squashed by his own compromise of conservative principles, in some ways repeating the mistakes of his father, while ignoring many lessons in executive leadership he should have learned at Harvard Business School. Of course George W could never quite overcome being dogged from the outset by half of the nation convinced he was electorally illegitimate -- thus aiding the resurgence of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.
But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could Obama riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?
No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan.
But not this jerk. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task-- all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.
In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: "For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."
Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.
Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.
CLINIC SAYS NO-HAT POLICY APPLIES TO MUSLIM DOCTOR'S HEADSCARF
A Muslim doctor interviewing for a job at a suburban Dallas medical clinic says officials there told her she couldn't wear her headscarf in the workplace.
Dr. Hena Zaki of Plano, Texas, said Friday that she was shocked when CareNow officials told her that a no-hat policy extended to her hijab.
The 29-year-old doctor wants an apology and a change in CareNow's policy.
However, CareNow President Tim Miller says he sees nothing wrong with the policy and feels no need to apologize. In a statement, his company says it does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion or national origin in employment decisions.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations calls CareNow's policy "a blatant violation" of federal law.
(Hold your ground Tim Miller!
As for you, Hena Zaki, fuck off and go back to where your ancestors came from! We don't need you, doctors like you, of even citizens like you! And take that assholes at Council on American-Islamic Relations with you!)
MURDER NEEDS NO FOOTNOTE
Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which by some weird circumstance also includes hate crime legislation.
Now, I'm no fan of hate. Hate in all forms is ugly, even when performed by beautiful people (that's a shout out to Stephanie Von Pratt, who turned me down for my senior prom). But here's what I don't get: If I kill someone, I'm a killer. But hate crime law says that I also broke a new law, one that has to do with my thoughts when I committed said crime.
So it's a thought crime more than a hate crime. Which begs the question: How can a thought be against the law?
Now I can barely read, so I don't want to get too deep into this, but if I were to kill my co-host Bill Schulz, whether I hated him or not, that's a crime. But, if we find out later that he was a sequential hermaphrodite, one might say it could be a hate crime.
I don't get that at all.
What of terrorists? Does the fact that they hate us make their crimes worse? Not to them; punishment is meaningless. Which is the real truth about hate, anyway: Hate crime laws won't stop hate or crime. It's an after-the-fact gesture that does nothing to stop evil.
Even more, focusing on the killer's outlook diminishes the victim. It's no longer Bill Schulz is dead, but "Bill Schulz, the sequential hermaphrodite, is dead."
Humanity should come before identity. We need to see people as people, not as part of groups. We know bigotry is bad. But murder in any form is so substantially worse, that it needs no footnote.
LET’S KILL ALL THE TOMATOES!
If we can correctly guess anything about the nature of the leftist mind, it’s that its neurons, in varying degrees, are rife with chemicals that give rise to the love of power, the love of being ruled, the love of hypocrisy, and the love of neurotic guilt - a quadruplet that explains perverse behaviors that leftists always characterize as resulting from a triumph of reason.
For example, when American liberals hear Shakespeare’s character say that to create a utopian society, "The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers," they don't cheer a person who reveals an admirable thoughtfulness regarding what "Utopia" means.
Rather, liberals claim reason impels them to hiss, "Dick the Butcher is a racist, fascist troglodyte - like every member of today’s tort reform loving mob!"
To be honest about it, leftist perversity always gets the "let’s kill" thing wrong.
Such is the case regarding the bureaucrats of the Swedish National Food Administration, who, in their zeal to reduce Sweden’s "carbon footprint," are trying to convince Swedes to do a lot of perfectly stupid killing.
What is this all about? Well, to understand it, one first needs to know that according to Elisabeth Rosenthal (NY Times), all Swedes may soon be confronted with new labels that list "the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the production of foods, from whole wheat pasta to fast food burgers."
To give us an idea of what the labels look like, Rosenthal explains that a set of guinea pig Swedish shoppers are already being "flummoxed" by the following pronouncement on a box of oatmeal (which this author has restated in the English system).
"Climate declared: 14 ounces CO2 per pound of product."
Now, Swedes may be bewildered by the message, but Americans immediately perceive both its meaning and intent:
The information informs shoppers that nearly a pound of carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere to produce a pound of the oatmeal.
Its purpose is to encourage Swedes to do their darnedest to kill one food and purchase another that is more carbon friendly -price be damned.
As sensible people will guess, the real plan is eventually to ditch the program’s Obama-sized portion of hope and replace it with governmental force that kills food choices.
But as things now stand, the Food Administration is simply counting on obedient subjects of the Swedish nanny state to love the most environmentally correct foods.
Yes, love them - even if, for example, the stuff has the taste and texture of stable bedding and is infinitely less nutritious than the steelcut havremjöl, which, topped with environmentally sinful sugar and banana and eaten for frukost on many a frozen morning, has, since childhood, warmed the little that remains of the Swedish heart and soul.
Swedes will also have to make other wrenching decisions as they turn from their shopping lists to read from "proposed new dietary guidelines" that take the environment into account.
Yes, every Swedish man and kvinna will be faced with deciding whether to stick with old favorites or obey bureaucrats who recommend eating carrots instead of greenhouse-grown tomatoes or beans in place of red meat.
"Never happen in the United States," somebody might say, "because Carol M. Browner, Obama’s Energy Coordinator/Global Warming Czar, doesn't have the stomach to attempt laying a culinary guilt trip on Americans."
Too bad Mr./Ms. Somebody is fixated on the stomach because Czar Browner certainly has the mind for the job as revealed by Stephen Dinan (Washington Times) when he informed us that as soon as Barack Obama chose her for the post, her name disappeared from websites of a number of organizations.
Foremost among those groups is the Commission for a Sustainable World Society, a subsidiary of Socialist International that, according to Dinan, promotes the idea of "global governance" aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions - the economy be damned.
Yes, like every other good liberal, Ms. Browner would love to kill tomatoes and steak in favor of springing into life dinners of carrots and beans, all in the name of energy independence and a clean environment.
We know this to be true because during the Election of ’08, T. Boone Pickens labored as hard as he could on behalf of a plan that eschews killing tomatoes to build a bridge to America’s independent, environmentally sound energy future by erecting electricity producing windmills from North Dakota to Texas and drilling vigorously for natural gas on American soil.
During the campaign, Pickens was optimistic that liberals understood and would act upon his practicable proposal.
But soon after Obama assumed office, T. Boone learned that he who lives upon hope in liberalism will die worse than by fasting as liberals conveniently shoved him and his plan into the vortex of the common sense sucking, We the People devouring black hole that is politics in Washington, DC.
No, liberals won't support practical, private sector plans that move toward achieving an energy independent, environmentally healthful America.
Neither will members of the "wealthiest Democratic group" (Pew Research) reach into their own deep pockets to cover millions of liberal rooftops with photovoltaic systems, a technology currently too costly for most Americans.
But in their insatiable pursuit of power, liberals will connive mightily to institute abominations such as "Cap and Trade," a contrivance so mad Rube Goldberg couldn't even imagine it but one nevertheless beloved by partners at Goldman Sachs as well as accountants at the DNC and IRS.
They will continue to jet fuel all the way to Ulan Bator for a vacation or to Tierra del Fuego to attend a conference on "Reducing CO2 Emissions."
And having learned that Swedes are feeling guilty when they order their favorite burger, they will surely try to create a National Food Administration that issues "environmentally sensible" National Dietary Guidelines.
After all, according to the bible of the Liberal Church, wallowing in neurotic guilt or inducing it in others is one of the four main loves that make life worth living.
OBAMA STILL MASTERBATING ABOUT TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN!
The asshole living (part time) in the White House fired the military leaders in the gulf and appointed his "favorites".
Then he asked them to submit a report as to what is required to "win" the war.
When they submitted their report the "supposed president" let it lay on his desk for 2 months before looking at it!
When confronted with the fact that he was ignoring the military's needs he said he would make his decision after the Afghan run-off election.
Meanwhile, because we don't have enough troops or the equipment they need over there, September and October set records for the most U.S. military people killed!
Now the simple son of a bitch has said he will probably make a decision in a few weeks, after he returns from his trip to Asia!
How many more Americans are going to be killed and wounded because this half-assed bastard refuses to give them what they need ... and NOT what he "thinks" is appropriate?
What the fuck does he know about military or appropriate? This simple-minded bastard was never even a Boy Scout, and has never held a job where he had to make a decision!
ENOUGH IS FUCKING ENOUGH!
GOP SENATORS
To Boycott
Climate bill hearings
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is engaged in public partisan warfare over a climate bill, a battle that foreshadows the deep struggle the Obama administration will face as Democrats attempt to push a version of the sweeping legislation through the Senate.
Chairwoman Barbara Boxer of California announced last week that she will proceed with a markup of the bill beginning Tuesday, even though all seven Republicans on the committee say they plan to boycott the proceedings.
Republicans say that EPW rules prohibit Boxer from holding a markup without two Republicans present, but Boxer aides indicated on Sunday that they still planned to attempt the hearing.
"Sen. Boxer has said that she will use all the tools at her disposal to move forward," said a Boxer aide.
The boycott, led by the committee’s two most moderate Republicans, Sens. George Voinovich of Ohio and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, illustrates the difficulty for Democrats in getting significant bipartisan backing for their climate bill - even among GOP lawmakers who support taking action to combat climate change.
"I'm willing to work with the people on the other side of the aisle. But if you jam this thing through here, it’s not going to be good," Voinovich said on Thursday.
The Obama administration has so far been unable to attract significant Republican backing for major initiatives like health care and the economic stimulus package.
On climate, the two parties are battling over a handful of Republicans who might support a bill, including Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Dick Lugar of Indiana and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine.
Republican leaders see cap and trade as an issue that could severely hurt Democratic chances in the midterm elections, and they're pressuring their members to vote against the bill to keep their caucus as united as possible.
Democrats may need Republican votes to pass a bill to offset possible losses within their own party. Prominent moderate Democrats such as Sens. Max Baucus of Montana, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota have raised a long list of concerns about the bill. And at least some Democratic supporters expect to lose the votes of Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
Nelson said on Friday that a cap-and-trade bill could not pass the Senate this Congress.
"I haven't been able to sell that argument to my farmers, and I don't think they're going to buy it from anybody else," Nelson told CNBC.
Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry is working with South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham to build GOP support for the legislation by dangling provisions like increased domestic oil exploration and expanded use of nuclear power.
But so far, other Republicans have yet to voice strong support for a climate bill.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has co-sponsored several versions of his 2003 climate bill, has made clear that it will be difficult for him to support the Kerry-Boxer proposal without significantly greater commitments on nuclear power.
McCain told POLITICO that he’s spoken with Kerry about his requirements, and the Democrat is "not ready to do that."
Alexander has vocally opposed Boxer’s legislation - a stance some Democratic aides attribute to his position in the Republican leadership. Although he is pushing hard for electric cars, expanded nuclear power and renewable energy, Alexander believes the Kerry-Boxer bill will hurt economic growth.
Voinovich has spent months requesting additional analysis of the bill. His reputation for bipartisan deal making and concerns about climate change had raised hopes that the retiring senator could be in play. But his aides say it is unlikely that he'll be able to support this legislation, blaming his opposition on a fast-tracked committee procedure.
"These guys wanted to engage in the process," said a Voinovich aide. "That’s the big folly on Boxer’s part. She had an opportunity to reach across the aisle to compromise and deal with guys like Voinovich. That could have brought them along."
But Boxer says that she spoke with both Alexander and Voinovich several months ago, and they were unwilling to work with her on the bill. She dismissed the Republican opposition as political maneuvering used to delay Senate action.
Last year, she partnered with Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, who has since retired, to pass climate legislation through the committee.
"I had a partner in John Warner, but I have nobody else," said Boxer. "These Republicans on this committee are really more of the party of no. They are not interested in tackling this problem at all."
The seven Republicans on the committee met late Thursday night on the Senate floor and agreed to boycott the markup hearing. They want a more thorough analysis of the legislation to be completed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Voinovich first requested an EPA analysis of the House climate bill after it passed in late June, but he says he was turned down because the agency wanted to wait until the Senate bill was released.
To put pressure on the agency, Voinovich placed a hold on the nomination of Robert Perciasepe, the White House’s nominee for the No. 2 position at the EPA.
The agency released a short analysis of the bill last week and has agreed to run a fuller study, a process that Administrator Lisa Jackson said in committee hearings on Tuesday will take at least five weeks.
Voinovich and the other Republicans would like Boxer to wait at least that long.
Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the committee, cited the two years of negotiations over former President George W. Bush’s Clear Skies initiative, when he says Republicans postponed the markup several times as Democrats pushed for more information. Inhofe also struggled to get enough support for the legislation during that period, as Republicans then held a very narrow margin on the committee.
"That was a very deliberative process, and I think we need to be somewhat deliberative," he said.
But Boxer noted that the EPA conducted a more thorough analysis of the House bill and her legislation borrows heavily from that legislation.
"Their objections don't pass the smell test," she said. "It seems to me they just want to delay this and delay it so we don't make progress."
(Just what the hell do the Republicans think they will accomplish?
You do not "win a battle" by hiding from it! You face it like a man and beat the crap out of the opposition!
But then again, Republicans today aren't anywhere like the republicans of yesterday!!!)
'WALKING EAGLE'
Barack Obama was invited to address a major gathering of the American Indian Nation in upstate New York.
HE spoke for almost an hour on HIS future plans for increasing every Native American's present standard of living, since HE has now become the President.
HE referred to his career as a Senator, how HE had signed 'YES' for every Indian issue that came to HIS desk for approval. Although Obama was vague on the details of HIS plan, HE seemed most enthusiastic about HIS future ideas for helping HIS 'red sisters and brothers'.
At the conclusion of his speech, the Tribes presented Obama with a plaque inscribed with his new Indian name - "Walking Eagle". Obama then departed in HIS motorcade, waving to the crowds.
A news reporter later inquired, of the group of chiefs, how they came to select the new name they had given to Obama. They explained that "Walking Eagle" is the name given to a bird so full of shit it can no longer fly.
GUESS WHO IS AHEAD OF YOU TO GET THE H1N1 VACCINE
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are unhappy that detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility will get the H1N1 vaccine before many Americans.
Missouri Republican Congressman Roy Blunt says: "It's outrageous that in Missouri, expectant mothers, children and others vulnerable to the H1N1 virus do not have access to the vaccine and our tax dollars are funding vaccines for accused terrorists detained at Gitmo."
Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak wrote to Army Secretary John McHugh: "As long as Americans must wait to receive the vaccine, the detainees in Guantanamo Bay should not be given preferential treatment."
The military says the detainees are included in the priority group because prison populations are at a higher risk of getting the flu.
(Hummm ... it's a shame that the H1N1 vaccine doesn't come in suppository form ... with barbed-wire wrapping to insure they don't slip out. Afterall, we do want these poor misunderstood creatures of Allah to receive the full benefit of the vaccine!)
AMERICANS
Offended By
The American Flag?
This past week, a 20-year-old employee at a Home Depot in West Palm Beach was reportedly fired because he wore a button that said: "One nation, under God, indivisible" -- a quote from the Pledge of Allegiance.
Then in Massachusetts, a fitness center displayed a large American flag and some patrons of the fitness center complained that the flag was offensive because it might be construed as being a Christian symbol. I've heard it all now. To his credit, the owner of the fitness center decided that the flag would stay and the members who were offended would have to go.
Thank God for him!
The total idiots who didn't want to conduct their workouts in the presence of the American flag need more than help to get their bodies in shape. They need to get rid of some of the fat in their head and build up some muscle in their brains.
If the American flag offends people in America, then I suggest that those people find a flag they like better and take the next flight one way to where that flag flies. I'd actually be in favor of taking the bailout and stimulus money the government wants to spend and use it to stimulate people who hate our flag to bail out in the country of their choice.
It's been said, "you can't cure being stupid," and even government health care won't fix it. To those who don't like what the American flag represents, I have to wonder what is it about freedom that you find offensive?
That flag represents the sacrifice of thousands of men and women who have put on a uniform and given their very lives to empower us to know freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly. I don't hate that flag, I'm grateful for it and what it represents. I proudly pledge my allegiance to that flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
For those who hold it in contempt, I hope you do more than leave the gym; I really hope you leave the country and stop taking up space in a country that is big enough to handle your small mind, but wouldn't want to burden you with having to respect your freedom and the men and women of our military who died to give it to you.
Frankly, it would be easier to get rid of you than the flag and much better for the country.
(If you don't like the American flag, if you don't like the American anthem, if you don't like America ... GET THE FUCK OUT!)
THE GENDER STUDIES RACKET
DePaul students and faculty are up in hairy underarms over the denial of tenure to Melissa Bradshaw, a professor of women's and gender studies.
If you don't know what tenure is, it's a guaranteed lifetime job. And in case you don't know what "gender studies" is, it's horse poop.
So here we have an awesome collision of two idiotic practices: Tenure, which allows professors to pursue ideas that would fail in a world of measurable achievement, and gender studies, where earnest types angrily analyze the sexes, usually while wearing panties made from hemp.
Gender feminists believe being female is a social construct - internal sex organs be damned - and all life amounts to is a struggle between the powerless female against evil, patriarchal man.
In short, if I just said "moogie-bloogie-toogie," it would have made more sense.
See, gender studies is a racket. People only enroll in it to teach it. In that sense, it's a lot like joining Amway, but without the delightful products. And because gender studies doesn't help you do anything else but teach gender studies, no wonder tenure is so vital.
The sad thing is that the world really needs gender studies, but a real version. Men don't get women and women don't get men. Rather than spending so much time deconstructing power myths, we should be teaching the sexes how to play nice. Do that and you not only deserve tenure, but also some excellent toiletries.
If you'd like me to stop by, I have some anti-aging creams I'd love to show you. You'll like them so much, I bet you'll want to sell them yourself.
IS CHRISTMAS STILL DECEMBER 25TH?
When I was growing-up in Atlantic Highlands, N.J., all the Ricciardellis got together for holiday meals. All 90 of us (at least on July 4th ... a combination of the birth of both our grandmother and our adopted country)!
Naturally Christmas was the biggest holiday for my family, and the guest lists shrunk to around 9 parties of 10 guests each.
The second biggest holiday was Thanksgiving. And on Thanksgiving morning, before all the guests arrived, the Ricciardelli kids were all gathered in front of their TVs watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, waiting for that magic moment when the last float passed in front the Macy's store.
It was Santa! And the "official" beginning of the Christmas season. Now we could swamp our parents with our wish lists, and stores could put up their Christmas displays, and the Christmas sales would begin.
What a wonderful time it was.
Now I have to wonder ... "What the fuck happened?"
It seems that the Christmas advertising and sale season moved from Thanksgiving to Halloween.
Next it moved from Halloween to Columbus Day.
And this year I actually saw Christmas displays and advertisements on September 8th, the Tuesday after Memorial Day!
To me at least, this is fucking stupid! For two reasons.
The first is that none of the Christmas announcements or displays of 2009 contain, or are not allowed to contain, any religious theme, so far!
The second is that the entire reason for Christmas is NOT increased sales. It is supposed to be a time of joy, happiness, peace and love. And for us Christians, the celebration of Christ's birth!
A 4-month-long "Christmas Season" is pure bullshit!
And personally I will NOT spend one cent at any business that advertises Christmas before Santa's float passes in front of Macy's (yes, I still watch the parade).
IS IT AN INDICATION OF 2010 and 2012?
It appears that the productive voters have made a decision!
They don't like what has been happening for the past 11 months and are ready to make changes!
Another state has voted down the gay marriage law! (There are 31 states that supposedly had laws protecting gay marriage, and now all 31 have voted them down when presented to the voters!)
And it appears that all Democrats running for an elected position were defeated by conservative candidates!!
Way back when JFK was running for president the Democrats had a "theme song" ... "Happy Days Are Here Again" ... seems that the productive American voters are now singing that song...
OBAMA WON'T GET
Health Care Bill
In 2009
Senior Congressional Democrats told ABC News today it is highly unlikely that a health care reform bill will be completed this year, just a week after President Barack Obama declared he was "absolutely confident" he'll be able to sign one by then.
"Getting this done by the by the end of the year is a no-go," a senior Democratic leadership aide told ABC News. Two other key Congressional Democrats also told ABC News the same thing.
This may come as an unwelcome surprise for the White House, where officials from the president on down have repeatedly said the health care bill would be signed into law by the end of the year.
"I am absolutely confident that we are going to get health care done by the end of this year, and Nancy Pelosi is just as confident," Obama said Oct. 27 at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi may still be confident - and her spokesman Brendan Daly said today, "We are going to get our part done" - but the reason for the delay can be found in the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has yet to release the bill he eventually plans to bring to the Senate floor. Reid is still waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to come up with an estimated cost of several possible variations of his bill before deciding which one to introduce in the Senate.
That cost estimate, Democrats tell ABC News, is not expected until next week.
Asked directly by ABC News, "Will you pass health care reform this year?" Reid pointedly did not answer "yes."
Instead, he replied, "We are not going to be bound by any timetables," adding, "We are going to do this as quickly as we can."
The delay is causing some frustration among Reid's fellow Democrats, but Reid said of his colleagues, "They want us to do this the right way, not the fast way."
After Reid made his comments, his spokesman said the goal remains getting a health care bill passed by the end of the year.
"Our goals remain unchanged," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. "We want to get health insurance reform done this year, and we have unprecedented momentum to achieve that."
The White House has pushed hard to get a bill passed this year, getting it done before the beginning of the Congressional campaign season. But the delay in the Senate will almost certainly push the health care debate into 2010.
The White House has tried to avoid that because passing major legislation in a Congressional election year is considered more difficult.
The best hope, Congressional Democrats now say, is for Democrats to pass Senate and House versions of the health care bill by the end of the year, pushing off House-Senate negotiations for a final bill until January.
(Hopefully Obama will not get anything he wants until he is out of office!
He has already caused enough damage to America in the 11 months he has been operating out of the White House.
And ... I still want to see a copy of his REAL birth certificate and transcripts of all his educational experiences!)
ISN'T IT REMARKABLE?
The only automobile manufacturer to actually show a profit in the last quarter is Ford?
And the only automobile manufacture that told Obama and his buddies to go fuck themselves when they insisted that Ford take a multi-billion-dollar-bail-out?
Once again, it has been proven that if left to their own devices American corporations can turn things around and increase their security without the "help" of big government!
Once again, the government has proven that they have no idea how to run a business!
Prior to Ford's announcement the government has managed to trash AMTRAK (which it has been supporting for over 30 years and has never shown a profit), the postal service which now raises rate on a yearly basis and claims to be still loosing money, and both GM and Chrysler which have declared losses even after receiving billions of dollars in bail-out money!
Other "successes" of the current government include refusing to give Social Security recipients a COLA this year, but managed to give themselves a very healthy raise!
The government has castrated our military but cutting funding on equipment and supplies.
The government has managed to "appoint" a host of "czars", many of which are felons, to run the country with no responsibility to Congress of the American people.
The government has bowed in subservience to raghead warlords and chiefs.
The government has apologized for being responsible for every ill which every country in the world faces.
The government has managed to piss-off the leaders of our most trusted, and needed, allies, while sucking-up to leaders of terror-nations and bands of rogue terrorists.
Well, the American Public Worm is turning ... it is evidenced by the election results of November 3rd, and will be further realized in the general elections of 2010 and 2012.
MY CHRISTMAS SHOPPING STORES ARE GETTING RARE!
If you read yesterday's opinion you will notice that I have refused to shop at any store that advertises or display Christmas before Thanksgiving.
Well, it appears that I have severely limited my options!
So far Sears, Kmart, WalMart, Lowe's, Overstock ... WHAT? OVERSTOCK?!?!
I just can't ignore Overstock. Not that I have ever purchased anything from them, or will ever purchase anything from them, but they showed their old Christmas commercial last night ... the one with the "Big O Lady" singing a Christmas song.
Anyone who has been here for awhile will remember that I have this really great fantasy about her and me ...
I sill can't understand why they quit using her in their ads ... other than 95% of the female population is extremely jealous!
UNEMPLOYMENT FLIM-FLAM
In January 2009, as Obama unveiled his plans for economic recovery, he assured the Congress and the American people that, if we would just agree to set up a $787 billion slush fund for him to play with, he would fix our sick economy and that the unemployment rate would never exceed 8 percent. With a straight face, and with words that came straight from his teleprompter, he vowed that he would accomplish something that no man, and no government, has ever accomplished before: he would halt the downward spiral of the economy and stimulate economic growth, and he would do it all with borrowed money.
Democrats in Congress gave him what he asked for. By June 2009, just five months later, the unemployment rate was at 9.5 percent, and by mid-October it stood at 9.8 percent, the highest level since 1940 during the Roosevelt Administration. But what is most curious about current discussions of our economic plight is that no one, Democrat or Republican, ever seems to mention one of the greatest contributing factors to unemployment… the minimum wage.
The first attempt at establishing a minimum hourly wage occurred in 1933, during the early years of the Great Depression, when Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act set a minimum wage standard of $0.25 per hour. However, in a 1935 court decision (Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States), the United States Supreme Court found the act to be unconstitutional. The Roosevelt Administration made a second attempt in 1938 with the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The minimum wage was again set at $0.25 per hour and that legislation has withstood the test of time.
Whether Democrats conceived the idea of a minimum wage as an economic tool with which to buy the votes of those at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, or if the potential political benefits occurred to them as an afterthought, we may never know. What we do know is that, since its inception, the minimum wage has been a political football, a major factor in business economics and government social engineering.
Contrary to opinions on the political left, the minimum wage was never intended to provide a living wage for a head of household; its purpose was to provide a wage floor, preventing unskilled and entry-level workers from being exploited unfairly by unscrupulous employers.
However, it did not take long for the leaders of organized labor to figure out that, by exerting constant upward pressure on the minimum wage, the "trickle-up" effect on the higher wage brackets made non-economic wage demands in the skilled trades much easier to sell. And while liberals and labor leaders insist that the minimum wage has little or no impact on overall employment, they tend to ignore the impact of the minimum wage on the availability of entry-level jobs… the tens of millions of jobs at which teenagers and unskilled workers begin to learn the work ethic and the economic realities of the capitalist system.
Most liberal apologists for "progressive" social engineering have claimed that increases in the minimum wage have little, if any, effect on overall employment statistics. However, in spite of what leftists may say, numerous studies show that increases in the minimum wage do have a significant impact on overall employment… particularly on the availability of entry-level jobs.
In a study titled, "The Effect of the Minimum Wage on Covered Labor Demand," Dr. Walter J. Wessels of North Carolina State University, a leading expert in labor-management relations, agrees with most studies on the subject. His study finds that, "for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, overall employment decreases by 0 to 2 percent. It finds a stronger effect for covered (entry level) employment: a decrease in covered employment ranging from 4 percent to 5 percent."
The U.S. national minimum wage was held at $5.15 per hour from 1997 until 2007, perhaps because even liberal politicians were finally willing to admit, grudgingly, that businessmen, especially small business owners, must look very closely at their overall labor costs and that an increase of $0.75 or $1.00 per hour in the minimum wage could have a major impact on the number of minimum wage jobs that a given employer might have available.
However, after gaining control of both houses of Congress in 2006, Democrats made a major push in 2007 for the largest increase in the minimum wage in many decades, a forty percent increase from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour. And although the effort was strongly opposed by Republicans and by the Bush Administration, on the grounds that such a large increase would have a damaging impact on an already faltering economy, congressional Democrats attached the minimum wage increase to an Iraq War funding measure and the president was forced to sign it.
The minimum wage went from $5.15 per hour to $5.85 per hour in July 2007, from $5.85 to $6.55 in July 2008, and from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour on July 24, 2009. Bearing in mind that increases in the unemployment rate lag increases in the minimum wage by a year or more, a comparison between the two shows a clear corollary:
1999 - Minimum Wage: $5.15 per hour - Unemployment Rate: 4.2 percent
2000 - Minimum Wage: $5.15 per hour - Unemployment Rate: 4.0 percent
2001 - Minimum Wage: $5.15 per hour - Unemployment Rate: 4.7 percent
2002 - Minimum Wage: $5.15 per hour - Unemployment Rate: 5.8 percent
2003 - Minimum Wage: $5.15 per hour - Unemployment Rate: 6.0 percent
2004 - Minimum Wage: $5.15 per hour - Unemployment Rate: 5.5 percent
2005 - Minimum Wage: $5.15 per hour - Unemployment Rate: 5.1 percent
2006 - Minimum Wage: $5.15 per hour - Unemployment Rate: 4.6 percent
2007 - Minimum Wage: $5.85 per hour - Unemployment Rate: 4.6 percent
2008 - Minimum Wage: $6.55 per hour - Unemployment Rate: 5.7 percent
2009 - Minimum Wage: $7.25 per hour - Unemployment Rate: 9.8 percent
This is not to suggest that the doubling of the unemployment rate from 4.6 percent to 9.8 percent over a three year period is all due to a forty percent increase in the minimum wage. However, Professor Wessels’ findings would suggest that a forty percent increase in the minimum wage would result in the loss of as many as 12.3 million jobs in a civilian workforce of some 154.5 million over a three year period.
But the greatest damage is done in the number of jobs that are never created because of the significant increase in the minimum wage. Prof. Wessels suggests a 4-5 percent decrease in the number of available minimum wage jobs for each ten percent increase in the minimum wage.
Needless to say, it is nearly as problematic to estimate the number of jobs that were never created because of a forty percent increase in the minimum wage, as it is for Obama to take credit for the number of jobs saved by hundreds of billions of dollars of mostly wasted federal spending. These are things that no one can possibly know, or even estimate with any degree of certainty.
What is important for the American people to understand as we approach the 2010 mid-term elections is that the concern over joblessness shown by the Obama Administration and their Democratic friends in Congress is pure "flim-flam." Their unemployment concerns cannot be taken seriously when the Democratic Party and Democratic administrations have an unbroken record for killing millions of jobs through uneconomic increases in the minimum wage.
When teenagers can't find summer jobs to save money for college, and when young married couples need second jobs to make ends meet, but can't find them because they've been killed off by uneconomic, politically motivated, increases in the minimum wage, they should know where to place the blame.
FORT HOOD, TEXAS
12 KILLED
31 WOUNDED
Here is what is known at this time.
A U.S. Army Major, who has announced his opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for many months received orders deploying him to that area.
He then assembled several other Army troops and proceeded to shoot those members of the Army who served under his command, and were also scheduled to deploy to the Gulf.
The name of the Major was Malik Nadal Hasan, and he was killed by civilian police during his terror rage.
The names of the arrested suspected co-terrorists has been withheld, as has the names of the killed and wounded.
Obama, naturally, took this event for a "press conference" and called the shooting a "horrific outburst of violence" on members of the nation's armed forces. "It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an army base on American soil. My staff and my cabinet will find out who is responsible for this!"
(Hey, Obama ... isn't that the job of the Army? But, then again, you wouldn't know because even though you are the "Cucumber-In-Chief" you never served in the military and have no idea of what the military really does!)
But, as long as we are looking to place the blame, let's place it where it belongs.
On the Post commander! He was aware of the Major's anti-war sentiments and of his public outbursts against the war and his deployment.
(Those of us who remember, remember Sgt. Asan Akbar, a muslim American soldier, who ran through his camp in 2003 in the Gulf, and lobbed grenades and fired his M4 carbine into three tents that housed officers, killing 1 and wounding 12.
Maybe, just maybe, it is about time to investigate into muslims who want to join the American forces a little deeper?)
UDATE
The Army announced that the shooter acted alone and that the three other soldiers questioned were cleared and released.
But the two most startling announcements were that the civilian cop who killed the shooter, and was reported as dead, is in fact alive and doing well in the hospital.
The second fact released by the Army is that the shooter, Malik Nadal Hasan, is also alive in the hospital!
As an aside, it was announced that the victims were not targeted. They were unknown to the shooter and were just unlucky in being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Still, there should be a serious investigation into why this shooter was not stopped, since he had been extremely vocal in his opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both to his fellow officers, in an Internet blog, and even to his superiors for at least the past 6 months!!
DEMOCRATS' PLAN
To Help 'Sick'
Requires 6-month wait!
You're afraid your cancer is back, and a health insurance company just turned you down.
Under the health care bills in Congress, you could apply for coverage through a new high-risk pool that Barack Obama promises would immediately start serving patients with pre-existing medical problems.
Wait a second. Read the fine print. You may have to be uninsured for six months to qualify.
"If you are a cancer patient and have cancer now, you can't wait six months to go into a plan because your condition can go from bad to death," said Stephen Finan, a policy expert with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. He called the waiting period in the Senate bill "unacceptable."
Advocates for people with serious health problems, as well as some insurance experts, are raising questions about one of the most important upfront benefits in the Democratic health care legislation: a high-risk pool for the medically uninsurable.
Obama proposed the pool in his September health care speech to Congress. Intended to serve the most vulnerable as a temporary fail-safe, it would stay in place until 2013. That's when insurance companies would be banned from denying coverage because of medical problems.
Government subsidies to make coverage more affordable for millions of uninsured would also start that year.
Now, concerns are being raised about the design of the high-risk pools. In addition to the six-month wait, there's a more fundamental issue - whether $5 billion set aside for the three-year program is enough. The money would be used to help people in poor health pay premiums.
Obama credits his Republican presidential rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, for the risk-pools idea. But when the GOP candidate proposed it in 2008, the estimated cost was $7 billion to $10 billion a year.
The six-month wait is in the health care bill the Senate Finance Committee approved last month. To qualify for the pool, patients must be turned down for coverage because of a pre-existing condition and uninsured for at least six months.
"If you are somebody with cancer or a heart condition who needs immediate coverage and immediate treatment, that's not very helpful," said Karen Pollitz, a Georgetown University health policy professor.
Senate Finance staffers say the restriction is meant to prevent people switching from more expensive coverage to take advantage of government assistance.
But the House health care bill unveiled last week by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., doesn't include a waiting period. Instead, it would require insurance plans who "dump" seriously ill patients to repay the federal pool. "The House provision will provide immediate relief for people with high-risk conditions who have no alternative for coverage," said Finan.
It may be easier to fix the waiting period than the financing.
Both the House and the Senate Finance bills set aside $5 billion for the pools.
"It doesn't seem like it's near enough money," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was a top domestic policy adviser for McCain. The McCain campaign ultimately concluded it could take as much as $20 billion a year to properly run risk pools, he said. The White House says McCain's proposal was more elaborate and not directly comparable to Obama's.
If the Democrats' risk pool starts running out of money, the government may have to start a waiting list, raise premiums or take other unpopular measures. Congress could be asked for a bailout.
Several independent experts say concerns about the financing are valid.
"It would seem that ($5 billion) is going to be small relative to the need," said Thomas Buchmueller, a University of Michigan business professor.
Some 30 states now have risk pools for those who can't get health insurance on the private market, covering about 200,000 people at a cost of around $1 billion a year.
"This is clearly not going to be enough money to cover everybody," said Pollitz.
Insurance expert John Bertko, a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution, said it may be possible to stretch the $5 billion, but there's a small margin for error.
Bertko said his "back of the envelope" math suggests there are about 1 million uninsured Americans in poor health, or five times the number currently covered by state high-risk pools. If all of them signed up for the new federal pool, it would burn through the $5 billion in a year.
However, people eligible for government benefits often fail to sign up. And if only one-third were to enroll, the budget could work.
That's cutting it close. "No doubt about that," said Bertko.
(What the hell? If you are sick and need insurance ... too fucking bad?!?!
Wait for 6 months to pass from the time you applied for insurance, and if you are still alive, you might receive limited coverage?
But if you are an illegal alien, you and your whole family has complete coverage immediately ... at no cost!
Wadda buncha fuckin' morons!!)
FORCE CONGRESS ONTO GOVERNMENT HEALTH INSURANCE PLAN
Republican Rep. Joe Wilson proposed an amendment Wednesday that would force all members of Congress to receive health insurance coverage through the government-run plan proposed in the House's reform bill.
Though Republicans oppose the so-called "public option," the South Carolina gadfly -- who gained notoriety for shouting "you lie" at President Obama during his address to Congress two months ago -- is proposing the requirement to draw attention to what he sees as the plan's flaws.
"They know the government-run option will not be in the interest of the American people, either individually or for the American citizens at large," Wilson said Wednesday, arguing that's the reason Congress does not require its members to sign up.
The current House health care legislation states that members of Congress "may enroll" in the public plan. Wilson wants that changed to "must enroll."
"If the public option is good enough for the American people, then it's certainly good enough for Congress," Wilson said. "If this government-run plan is so good, why don't members of Congress take the plan?"
House Democrats have published their final adjustments to the 1,900-page health care bill, starting a 72-hour clock before the bill comes to the floor.
No Republicans have come forward in support of the bill, but Democrats have a strong enough majority to pass the bill as long as they can resolve intra-party disputes.
(Sounds good to me! Force the bastards to have the same insurance they want to sell to the American public!
And while they are at it ... let's also put a cap on their salary and expenses, as well as eliminate their "retirement pay" after a stinking 2 to 4 years of "service"!
Oh, and no more free postage and personal phone service, no more "pool cars", no more perks that the American public cannot cash-in on!)
WELFARE PEOPLE GET FREE CELLPHONES AND MINUTES!!!
Lifeline Assistance is part of a program that was created by the government to provide discounted or free telephone service to income-eligible consumers. To help bring you this important benefit, SafeLink Wireless is proud to offer Lifeline Service. Through our Lifeline Service you will receive FREE cellular service, a FREE cell phone, and FREE minutes every month! SafeLink Wireless Service does not cost anything - there are no contracts, no recurring fees and no monthly charges.
Any minutes you do not use will roll-over. Features such as caller ID, call waiting and voicemail are all also included with your service. If you need additional minutes, you can buy TracFone Airtime Cards at any TracFone retailer Walmart, Walgreens, Family Dollar, etc). SafeLink Airtime Cards will be available soon.
The process to qualify for Lifeline Service depends on the State you live in. In general, you may qualify if...
You already participate in other State or Federal assistance program such as Welfare, Federal Public Housing Assistance, Food Stamps and Medicaid.
OR
Your total household income is at or below 135% of the poverty guidelines set by your State and/or the Federal Government.
AND
No one in your household currently receives Lifeline Service through another phone carrier.
You have a valid United States postal address. In order for us to ship you your free phone you must live at a residence that can receive mail from the US Post Office. Sorry, but P.O. Boxes cannot be accepted.
In addition to meeting the guidelines above you will also be required to provide proof of your participation in an assistance program, or proof of your income level.
(Another Obama gift to his parasitic people!)
