TwoConservatives

Harry Reid admits Obama Administration a Failure

2011-04-06T20:31:00.003-04:00

For two years, Obama and the Democrats have been trying to sell the notion that the economy is improving because of their policies. However, once in a while a Democrat will slip up and admit that they have royally screwed up our economy, to the point for example where 8 percent unemployment is considered a GOOD thing. Today, Senator Harry Reid, once again trying to explain how his complete inability to pass a budget in the past year and a half since the start of the previous year's budget is actually the Republicans fault, let again slip that the Pelosi/Reid/Obama economy is a sham, a shambles, a pathetic shell of what was a once great American Economic Engine (from the National Review):

This budget that we have spent so much time talking about is really about making tough choices, hard choices, difficult choices. The American people understand this. They understand tough choices. They have to make them every day, especially now with the economy being in the shape it’s in; so should their representatives in Congress make tough choices.

Yes, especially now that Obama and his incompetent allies Reid and Pelosi have weighed down business with inexplicable regulations and onerous burdens, thrown the housing and other markets into disarray, and worked overtime to suppress the growth of the economy, all the while pretending they have our best interests at heart. Of course, Reid wouldn't think to actually have his party MAKE any touch choices. The fiscal year started October 1st; yet he never passed a budget during last year, or even after this year started. And he still hasn't passed a bill to fund the rest of the year, which would then be reconciled with the hosue version.

County Redistricting is a joke

2011-04-05T08:33:00.002-04:00

My column in the News/Messenger this morning is about the extreme district maps put out by the Senate Democrats in an attempt not only to elect more democrats, but also to protect their specific incumbents; the house did much the same, with slightly better maps. But here at home, our own county maps are much the same, only in this case they seem to be drawn to punish lesser-liked incumbents, while protecting favored incumbents from challenges within their own party. I don't like gerrymandering to eek out better outcomes for a party. I'm less concerned about competitive races than I used to be, because I'm tired of having to care so much about who wins an election. I used to feel that while there would be differences, both candidates would act mostly for the good of their constituents. I certainly don't feel that way about a lot of democrats anymore, and as I said in my column, I imagine democrats feel the same about republicans. But there is a difference between splitting voters so that more conservatives are grouped together in one place, and more liberals in another, and splitting so one party wins more than their votes suggest. In some ways, the first is good grouping, putting like-minded people with similar concerns together. But when a state like New Jersey has 52% republican vote, but only 41% republican representation in the legislator, that's a problem. Bringing it back to the county, if the county had a majority democratic vote, it would be silly to still have a board split 6-2 for republicans, and it wouldn't reflect reality. Worse, while I would personally love the representation, it would frustrate those who felt cut out by the system itself. Our society can exist peacefully only to the extent that the people believe they have a say. When the Supreme Court says "abortion is legal, no matter what the people want", it causes strife, tension, and a feeling of disempowerment. Likewise, when one political party's voters feel that, no matter what they do, they can't get a majority because they all have to vote in one or two districts, it will make them rightfully angry, and they will feel powerless and hopeless to change things in the civil manner of elections. I love conservatives winning elections, because they have better solutions. I love when they can convince the mass of independents that conservative principles are better, and can get re-elected because, regardless of party, the people they represent feel appropriately represented, and just WANT to re-elect them. I wouldn't want to appoint conservatives to rule against the will of the people. In some ways, extreme gerrymandering does just that -- artificially puts one party in power at the expense of the will of the people expressed through the vote. You can't expect there NOT to be some games played with the redistricting maps, and I wouldn't want to put the process in the hands of unelected people with unknown biases and no accountability. Technically, we can vote people out if we don't like how they draw the maps, although I realise the maps are drawn to help them NOT be voted out. So, if I had to change ONE thing about redistricting, I would do this: No map takes effect until after an election held for the people who drew the map. This would mirror the federal constitutional rule that no raise takes effect until an ensuing election. That way, if the elected officials take too much of a liberty with the lines, the aggrieved voters can respond by voting them out. To make that useful, we'd also have to have a rule that every map needs two votes, with the second after the election. Unfortunately, this could drag the process on forever, so maybe instead there could be a referenda on the maps with a simple up/down vote of the electorate. For the county maps, there is an emergency meeting on April 17th. Show up and show your disapproval of maps drawn to protect incumbents at the expense of the voters. Explain why you don't want to vote in different precincts that aren't even in your district, and why your neighborhood wants to vote together, and not be split between districts.

How the Voting Rights Act contributes to gerrymandering

2011-04-04T23:29:00.002-04:00

The Voting Rights Act requires some states to maintain "majority-minority" districts. These districts exist in the belief that only minorities can represent minorities. A black person can only be represented by a person with the same skin color. An African-American, by virtue of the color of their skin, has more in common with other people who have the same skin color, than they do with people in the community they choose to live in. That's the principle. For decades, it has been used to dilute the power of minorities, by herding them together into their own districts, so they can't interfere with the elections in other districts. Perversely, by granting people representatives matching their skin color, the Act has forced in many cases incompetent representation on a large segment of our population, eliminated their ability to choose candidates by essentially building "can't-lose" districts where they chosen democrat wins the primary or caucus and cruises to victory. The report of the Independent Bipartisan Commission on Redistricting hits on this problem without emphasizing it (H/T to Virginia Virtucon):

Voting Rights Act Requirements. Because an increasingly mobile African-American population means that they do not always reside in distinct communities, drawing compact majority-minority districts while maintaining communities of interest became the greatest challenge facing the student teams. So, given the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, student teams sometimes sacrificed compactness in order to achieve the appropriate number of majority-minority districts.

Let's parse that. "Increasingly mobile African-American population" means that the blacks are no longer sequestered in their own compact segregated communities, but instead are integrating into communities throughout the state. This apparently is a problem that we have to solve. "They do not always reside in distinct communities" -- they are blended in with other non-minorities, sharing communities, facilities, and having common interest with people of different races, colors, and creeds. Rather than allowing themselves to be identified by the color of their skin, these minorities have chosen to live with people they have something REAL in common with. Kind of like you don't have a community made up of sexy blonde women -- people don't restrict themselves to living with people who "look like me" anymore. "drawing compact majority-minority districts while maintaining communities of interest" -- it would be nice if this meant what it said -- that they were balancing the needs of the VRA in creating majority-minority districts with the real-world idea of instead grouping people with REAL common interest, not just common melatonin levels. Unfortunately, it's clear that's not what is meant -- because of the "drawing compact districts" caveat. It would be easy to draw a compact district that put communities of interest together, if they meant communities of real interest. So clearly, they mean "communities of interest" to mean "common skin color". The implication is that even though blacks have moved away from each other, they still share this common bond that is more important than the bonds they have chosen to be important. So we drag them back together, by the color of their skin, because the VRA knows better than them what their "community" really is. "sacrificed compactness in order to achieve the appropriate number of majority-minority districts" -- see, the blacks chose to live amongst the non-minorities, so we sacrificed drawing districts based on where people live, so as to cut out the blacks from where they live and virtually put them back in their sequestered, segregated "communities" they chose to abandon as meaningless. The VRA was passed in a time when the Rev. Martin Luther King could only dream of an age when people would be judged, and seen, by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. He could hardly imagine that, decades later, the very laws which were supposed to start that process instead perpetuates it. It is time to abandon the voting rights act, and let the minority community do what the rest of us minorities do -- choose who we associate with, and fight amongst other minorities over who will represent us. Sure, they might not elect a minority, but they will have a stronger voice as more elected officials are beholden to their support. Rather than one crank special-interest representative everybody can ignore, there will be a half-dozen serious representatives who need to serve their constituents of all colors. And if that means the minority community doesn't get what they want, they can join the club, with all the religious minorities who are underrepresented, all the social conservatives who fight to be heard, all the environmentalists who don't get to be grouped together in a voting block, and all the other frankly more reasonable groupings that could exist. Like I said, nobody takes all the blue-eyed, brown-haired people and thinks they need a blue-eyed, brown-haired representative -- because we know how silly it would be to think that every blue-eyed person thinks alike, or has the same interests. It's time to stop pretending every minority cares about the same things, thinks primarily of themselves as that minority, and has a unique set of concerns that couldn't possibly be understood by people with the wrong skin tone.

Halloween Haunt at Kings Dominion

2010-10-19T23:42:00.006-04:00

For the past two years, I've done a halloween haunted maze at my house, with the help of my children and their friends.

This year, that mantle will pass to my son, who will be running a smaller version of the maze with his friends. My daughter and I meanwhile have joined the "professional ranks", working as halloween haunt monsters at Kings Dominion's Halloween Haunt.

This is a very tiring job, but also a lot of fun. We've always enjoyed going to these halloween mazes at the various theme parks in the area; but getting to scare other people has a special pleasure.

So if you do manage to make it down to Kings Dominion this fall, stop by the Toxic Plague, and we'll be sure to try to scare the living daylight out of you.

Sikh, Muslim -- what's the difference for Obama?

2010-10-19T14:52:00.003-04:00

An interesting and quirky story today, in which we find that President Obama has decided NOT to visit a Sikh temple while in India, supposedly because stupid Americans might think Obama is a Muslim:

Revered by Indians of all faiths, it is a cherished emblem of India’s religious diversity. So it was no surprise when the gold-plated marvel was touted as the likely third stop on President Obama’s visit to India, scheduled for early November.

Religious diversity -- that was probably the first strike against them in Obama's mind.

the plan appears to have foundered on the thorny question of how Mr. Obama would cover his head, as Sikh tradition requires, while visiting the temple.

“To come to golden temple he needs to cover his head,” said Dalmegh Singh, secretary of the committee that runs the temple. “That is our tradition. It is their problem to cover the head with a Christian hat or a Muslim cap.”

And while it doesn't say so in the article, it appears you could also where a jewish headcovering, and the article says most people just tie a kerchief around their heads.

Now, Sikhism is NOT Islam. But occasionally, Sikh's in this country are confused for Muslims:

Sikhs in the United States have often been mistaken for Muslims. Sikhism, which arose in the Punjab region in the 15th century, includes elements of Hinduism and Islam but forms a wholly distinct faith. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Sikhs in the United States have been occasional targets of anti-Muslim discrimination and violence — a Sikh was killed in Arizona a few days after the attack on the World Trade Center by a man who mistook him for a Muslim.

Given this history, it is sad that our President is so concerned about his PERSONAL APPEARANCE that he is willing to contribute to the ignorance of others, and play into their prejudices, by refusing to enter the Sikh temple because he is afraid someone might think he is a Muslim:

“We have worked so hard to establish in America that Sikhs have a very different identity than Muslims,” Mr. Phoolka said. “It is very unfortunate that even the White House is conveying the message that there is no difference between Muslims and Sikhs.”

But Obama, more than any President I can ever remember, is a self-centered, self-absorbed narcisist who would put his own reputation above all else, even one of those "teachable moments". Seriously, what great harm is it if some people refuse to believe Obama when he says he is a Christian? So what if some people think he is Muslim? How does that really harm him?

But rather than do the right thing, and show respect to India and demonstrate our own country's tolerance of free expression and differing religions, Obama has chosen to slight the Sikh faith, perpetuate the myth that Sikh's and Muslims are alike, and once again make our country look foolish -- all to protect his own reputation:

Mr. Obama, a Christian, has struggled to fend off persistent rumors that he is a Muslim,

Oddly, by refusing to enter a Sikh temple, Obama is actually contributing to the rumors that he is a Muslim. Because the two faiths have had a sometimes unfriendly relationship, while Christians have no problem entering a Sikh temple.

Many Presidents have taken into account how their actions would reflect on America and it's principles. Obama on the other hand regularly takes actions that reflect poorly on our country -- it's his personal appearance that he cares about, not the country he represents. And once again, he has embarrased our nation for no good reason.

Remember the Death Panels?

2010-09-21T01:16:00.002-04:00

Obama, realising that he has destroyed the economy, and his health care program is despised by most people planning to vote this November, has belatedly come to the conclusion that he better attack something.

So, as the supreme divider he is, Obama set out to attack the heart of America, those people who are tired of the government invading our lives, spending our money, and corrupting our society.

But in his rant at the Tea Party, he seems to have revealed his "plan" for seniors.

From Obama's CNBC Town Hall:

The problem long term are the problems that I talked about earlier. We’ve got -- we had two tax cuts that weren’t paid for, two wars that weren’t paid for. We’ve got a population that's getting older.

Well, we know that Obama opposed the two tax cuts, and is certainly railing against unpaid-for-tax cuts (while he has no problem with unpaid-for spending). And we know he opposed the wars, and he certainly seems opposed to fighting a war without paying for them.

So it seems this list is a list of things he wants to end. No more unpaid-for tax cuts, no unpaid-for wars.

And what is the 3rd thing he is opposed to? A population that is getting older.

:-)

Seriously though, Obama's town hall meeting was full of the same platitudes Obama always provides, along with his fantasy-land vision of america where his stimulus actually stimulated, were Obamacare is already providing free health care for everybody, where all the middle class is working, and we can fix our debt problem if we just take $34 billion in new taxes from the rich.

His problem of course, beyond being delusional, is that nobody is buying the hope anymore, and come november, we will be changing.

How the Grinch Stole Healthcare

2010-09-18T19:27:00.002-04:00

This is not mine, I found it at NetRightNation:

Just something to remember as you keep reading story after story of doctors, medical supply and technology companies, hospitals, and insurance companies abandoning the health care field or greatly raising their costs.

We had a pretty good system that needed to be tweaked. Obama took that system, and destroyed it, and gave us a system that won't work, and will cost people lives.

The only upside is the rest of the world will learn that they've been leaching off of us for their health care, and maybe figure out that they too have the wrong prescription for the world's survival.

Obama says things are as bad as ever.

2010-09-17T20:07:00.002-04:00

Almost two years after Obama said he was saving us from the Great Depression, he now admits that our economy is in as much risk as it has ever been, meaning it is as bad or worse than it was when he started "fixing" it.

In a speech attacking Linda McMahon for actually having held a job, and being a successful career woman, Obama spoke of how important it was to elect someone who could save us from the Obama Economy:

At this moment, we are facing challenges we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. And facing serious challenges requires serious leaders -– leaders who are willing to take on the status quo; leaders who are willing to take on special interests; leaders who are willing to fight for our people and our future

Well, last year Obama kept claiming we were heading for a great depression, but few people agreed with him. But he said that if we just spent all our money on democratic special interest groups, our unemployment rate would tumble and everything would be A-OK.

Well, the democrats did everything he asked, with a filibuster-proof majority in the senate and a large majority in the house. And instead of making things better, unemployment soared, the economy sputtered, and now even Obama has to admit that we have only made things worse.

So, why would we want to elect MORE democrats? Why would we vote a guy who has lived on the public payroll like Blumenthal, who only pretended to be a Vietnam Veteran, when we can elect a person who has actually EARNED a living and knows how to run a business and create jobs, and understands what Obama never will -- the troubles that real americans face.

Why some people think Obama is a Muslim

2010-09-12T10:00:00.003-04:00

Compare his messages for Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah, to see where his heart lies.

Statement by the President on the Occasion of Ramadan

On behalf of the American people, Michelle and I want to extend our best wishes to Muslims in America and around the world. Ramadan Kareem.

Ramadan is a time when Muslims around the world reflect upon the wisdom and guidance that comes with faith, and the responsibility that human beings have to one another, and to God. This is a time when families gather, friends host iftars, and meals are shared. But Ramadan is also a time of intense devotion and reflection – a time when Muslims fast during the day and pray during the night; when Muslims provide support to others to advance opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere. For all of us must remember that the world we want to build – and the changes that we want to make – must begin in our own hearts, and our own communities.

These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings. Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country. And today, I want to extend my best wishes to the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world – and your families and friends – as you welcome the beginning of Ramadan.

I look forward to hosting an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan here at the White House later this week, and wish you a blessed month.

May God’s peace be upon you.

Nothing but praise for the Muslim people. He mentions Muslim and Islam 8 times.

Now, read the message to the Jewish people:
Remarks by the President on the Occasion of Rosh Hashanah

As Jews in America and around the world celebrate the first of the High Holy Days I want to extend my warmest wishes for the New Year. L’shana Tova Tikatevu – may you be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life.

Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the spiritual calendar and the birth of the world. It serves as a reminder of the special relationship between God and his children, now and always. And it calls us to look within ourselves – to repent for our sins; recommit ourselves to prayer; and remember the blessings that come from helping those in need.

Today, those lessons ring as true as they did thousands of years ago. And as we begin this New Year, it is more important than ever to believe in the power of humility and compassion to deepen our faith and repair our world.

At a time when too many of our friends and neighbors are struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, it is up to us to do what we can to help those less fortunate.

At a time when prejudice and oppression still exist in the shadows of our society, it is up to us to stand as a beacon of freedom and tolerance and embrace the diversity that has always made us stronger as a people.

And at a time when Israelis and Palestinians have returned to direct dialogue, it is up to us to encourage and support those who are willing to move beyond their differences and work towards security and peace in the Holy Land. Progress will not come easy, it will not come quick. But today we had an opportunity to move forward, toward the goal we share—two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.

The scripture teaches us that there is “a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” In this season of repentance and renewal, let us commit ourselves to a more hopeful future.

Michelle and I wish all who celebrate Rosh Hashanah a sweet year full of health and prosperity.

No praise for the Jewish people here -- in fact, he only mentions the religion one time, in the 1st sentence of greeting. Instead, most of the message is a political one, not about the Jewish religion and celebration, but Obama's wish that Israel (a country) should accept the two-state solution he wants, and how they should be more tolerant (while the muslims were praised for THEIR "tolerance" even though no muslim state allows Christians to share their faith, and we had to burn bibles in Afghanistan because of their intolerance).

He doesn't even ask that God's peace be upon the Jewish people -- only the Muslims. No mention of how Jews have contributed to our country (like he bizarrely thinks Muslims have), just about how Jews must become more compassionate, give to the poor, and put away their prejudice and oppression.

NOTE: The idea that we would gauge people's achievements based on their religious beliefs is a typical liberal one -- the left loves to segregate us, treat us all based on groups they assign to us. Unless the achievement is of a religious nature, or a socio-political one, who cares what faith was held by Einstein, or Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubbs, Eli Whitney, or Jonas Salk (Although none of those people are Muslim).

Thus, we have the administration spending OUR tax dollars for NASA to make Muslim countries feel better about their acheivements. But in any case, here is the President, praising Muslims for their contributions to America, while castigating Jews for not doing enough for the poor and downtrodden;

Here we have the President praising Islam for its tolerance (on a week when they threatened to riot, murder, rape, pillage, and attack our troops because some nut in Florida was simply going to burn a book), while telling Jews they need to be MORE tolerant.

Here we have the President not making a single mention of ANY muslim country while he praises Muslims for being a positive force in the world, while he attacks the Jewish Faith for the existance of Israel while chiding them for not working harder to co-exist with Palestine, a political construct with the express aim of DESTROYING ISRAEL and WIPING OUT THE JEWISH FAITH ON THIS PLANET (and guess what, Palistine is run by MUSLIMS, the TOLERANT RELIGION).

Obama says he's not a Muslim, and he certainly doesn't practive the faith. But he sure goes out of his way to make up lies about how great Muslims are, while taking even ceremonial opportunities to castigate a TRUE RELIGION OF PEACE, Judaism, without even having the decency to MENTION the religion in his proclamation on one of their religious holidays.

Think about that -- an entire message to Jews on their religious holidays, and not ONE use of the word "Judaism".

What Went Wrong : Fineman discovers Obama's Incompetence

2010-09-12T09:22:00.003-04:00

Howard Fineman does a little reflecting in his Newsweek column, asking What Went Wrong. It's nothing we didn't already know.

First, Obama was full of himself:

One day in the winter of 2005, I was in a Senate hallway when the new guy from Illinois arrived for a vote. Sen. Barack Obama—pop-star charisma, limitless possibility—knew his own allure.

Second, Obama had never lead anything, and had no idea how to run anything:

“Shovel ready” projects identified in the spring of 2009 are often still “unshoveled” because officials aren’t in place to approve them, says Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. “The fact is,” he says, “Obama never really ran anything, even legislatively.” Neither has his closest adviser, message guru David Axelrod.

But being full of himself, Obama couldn't see his own flaws, and unlike past Presidents didn't surround himself with people who could be the leaders he wasn't. Instead, he thought he could do it all, because he thought he always had (and apparently, Fineman still thinks Obama actually was an over-acheiver):

Obama—an overachiever, the guy who fills up a second blue book on the extra-credit question—tried to do it all. His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, eager to please the new boss, declared before Inauguration Day: “Never allow a crisis to go to waste. There are opportunities to do big things.” But in doing big things, they failed to fully attend to (and be seen attending to) the immediate economic needs of the middle class. “There hasn’t been the laserlike focus on the economy there could have, and should have, been,” says a top Democratic strategist who declined to be named criticizing the White House.

Now, that's something I would like to see from a reporter like Howard -- the actual blue book that Fineman thinks he filled with an extra-credit question. Howard is a true believer, who without a single shred of evidence (college transcripts, scholarly papers, professors who remember how smart Obama was or even that Obama was in their classrooms) believes the hype that Obama sold, and even makes up his own aprocryphal statements like his "blue-book" assertion.

Fineman has also belatedly come to understand that Obama has no focus, and shows little interest in actually doing the job, leading him into petulant and ignorant decisions:

The president is an agreeable guy, but aloof, and not one who likes to come face to
face with the enemy.
...
In the spring of 2009, the White House strong-armed House Democrats into voting for a cap-and-trade environmental bill, even though it was clear the Senate wouldn’t go along.
...
It’s the task of the presidency to cajole people, including your enemies, into doing what they don’t want to do if it is good for the country. Did Obama think he could eschew the rituals of politics—that all he had to do was invoke His Hopeness to bring
people aboard?

Fact is, Obama has never really had to work hard at anything, because the people who raised him felt sorry for him and gave him too much. He assumed that someone would do the job for him, like someone has been doing for him most of his life. His mother, his grandparents, his mentors — everybody seems to have wanted to help out the poor orphan boy who lost his dad, and they taught him nothing about hard work and sacrifice.

It still cracks me up to hear how Obama turned down high-paying jobs in law to do community service — because first, he seems to have been fine, with a multi-million-dollar house and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year coming through his wife and all; but second, because if he HAD gotten a high-paying legal position, he would have had to actually have WANTED TO WORK. He took the easy way out, “community organizer”, and accomplished nothing.

Fineman also puts to bed many of the lies Obama has been telling. For example, the "change the tone in Washington" by "reaching out to the opposition":

The president hasn’t invited the House minority leader over to talk, and Obama had his first private Oval Office chat with Mc Connell only last month. Better late than never, but too late to do any good this cycle.

Imagine that -- almost two years into his term, and he had NEVER had a one-on-one with the head Republicans in either legislative body, and has only just recently sat down with McConnell, who was one of his Senate colleagues.

Remember in contrast that Bush, who was roundly panned by the "media" as partisan, had the entire Kennedy clan over to the White House early in his administration, and regularly reached out to the Democrats both individually and in groups.

But Obama, having a large Democrat majority in the house, and at one point a filibuster-proof 60-vote Democrat majority in the Senate, saw no reason to actually work with Republicans, deciding the "new tone" should be to attack republicans and pass laws paying back his constituents for their support and campaign contributions.

Most importantly, Fineman admits to what we already knew, and what the Media worked many long weeks to acheive: Obama is a personal (fictional) creation of the media, and his election was manufactured without regard for the disastrous policies Obama was KNOWN to want to pursue, but which the media worked with Obama to hide from the voters:

“Obama’s 2008 victory was a personal one,” says Bill Galston, an adviser to President Clinton. “It wasn’t a vote for a more expansive view of the role and reach of government.”
...
Take health-care reform. Ten years hence, perhaps, it will be seen as the signal achievement of the Obama years. But for now, it’s an unpopular law that took a divisive year to enact, that liberals and conservatives loathe, that is full of bureaucratic and fiscal IEDs, and that drained attention from dealing with the economy. If you disagree, look at Obama’s speech last week in Cleveland. In 47 minutes, he mentioned health care for about 25 seconds.

Ten years hence, if our country is lucky, Obamacare will be a long-gone bad dream. But it is telling that, with Obama claiming he saved the economy from a depression, even one of his biggest chearleaders in the meedia acknowledges that nothing Obama did on the economy will be seen as useful a decade from now. And Fineman realises that Obama doesn't even believe in his own health care program anymore, even if Fineman still has a psychotic hope for it.

I guess we should thank Howard for finally recognising the truth, even if he'll never acknowledge his own part in electing a clueless, aloof, incompetent non-leader with a overblown sense of his own importance to the most powerful job in the world at a time we needed a real leader.

Surrender -- 9/11/2010

2010-09-11T12:04:00.003-04:00

9/11/2010. This is the day that we surrendered to the radical Muslim hoardes.

Those radical muslims threatened our armed forces, if we are to believe the generals.

In response, the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, the FBI (3 times), and General Petraeus all responded to the threat against our troops -- by actively and publicly intervening to stop the exercise of free speech (as defined by the Supreme Court) that was objected to by those who threatened us with war.

In response to the overwhelming force of government threats and intimidation, the citizen of our country backed down, and agreed to relinquish his freedom to make his statement.

This is the very definition of surrender -- the Commander in Chief (as Obama referred to himself when harassing a citizen for threatening to commit free speech), rather than standing up for the rights of our citizens guaranteed in the constitution, surrendered to those threatening war. Without a shot being fired, the muslim extremists who threatened our troops won the war.

The only question that remains is, are there any rights that our President, and his leadership team, are willing to defend against threats of violence? Well, we know that Obama refuses to stand up to the threat of violence from Mexico that would result from enforcing our immigration laws and stopping the illegal invasion of our country from the south.

So, what is next? Suppose the muslim extremists threaten violence if we don't make some muslim holy day a national holiday? What if they insist we allow muslim communities to practice sharia law? If they object to women wearing provocative garments when walking near mosques or during holy days?

What if they insist we don't prosecute the increasing acts of violence muslims are inflicting on their own families in the name of "honor killings"? Is there some point at which the Obama administration will draw the line and say "enough is enough -- we don't mind surrendering SOME of our rights to extremists, but not the rights that WE care about!!!!".

There are many forms of free speech that are highly controversial. Thus, the provocative statement "I may object to what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" -- a cornerstone of our freedom in this country. Obama's administration has replaced this with "If I object to what you have to say, I won't lift a finger to defend your right to say it".

Here, on the 9th aniversaray of 9/11, we have time to reflect on the war that the extremists launched on our way of life long ago, and the most bruttle battle in that war, the downing of the two towers and the smashing of the Pentagon. We rebuilt the Pentagon, but in our first show of weakness have failed to rebuild the towers, which is a constant source of delight to the extremists -- no matter how much we weaken them on the battlefield, they can look to Ground Zero and know they have mortally wounded us; this is why so many Americans dislike the idea of building a victory mosque so close to that site.

So it is sad that, on this aniversary, we are dealt such a blow, the surrender of our freedoms to these extremists. You don't negotiate with terrorists. You don't surrender your freedoms for the vain hope of security. If General Petraeus can't defend our troops against the mongrel extremist hordes, if the placement of our troops in Afghanistan results in the surrender of our free-speech rights at home, it is time for new leadership, a leadership that understands that the military exists to defend our freedoms, not so we have to surrender our freedoms to protect the military.

My Warning to All: Don't copy news articles.

2010-09-04T12:31:00.002-04:00

I'm not a lawyer. But my warning to all those who use the internet is simple -- RESPECT COPYRIGHT LAWS.

Don't copy entire articles from newspapers, without permission. There are papers going under who will sue you. One paper in particular, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, has come up with a business model which involvese suing their readers for small amounts.

They created a firm called RightHaven, whose sole purpose appears to be to file small suits against bloggers and others without enough money to defend themselves. This firm scours the internet for any references to articles from the LVRJ. If they find one, they will BUY the copyright from the LRVJ, and then sue the person who posted the article, or the host which allowed it to be posted.

Note that the newspaper is "no longer involved". So don't count on public opnion or a reasonable appeal to save you. This company is a lawyer-driven company with ONE PURPOSE IN MIND -- to get you to pay them money for violating copyright.

And to be clear -- it is unlikely that you would be able to justify a cut-and-paste of an entire article, even if you provide a link and a citation. (I wonder if the standard snark attack of quoting an article in little pieces with long responses to each part would be considered fair use?). Worse, even if you COULD win, are you ready to spend $50,000 defending yourself against a suit that apparently you can settle for $5000 or so?

The lawsuits all appear to be about the same: $75,000, plus surrender of your domain name. That appears to be a ploy, as the settlements seem much less, and the largest that has been reported publicly is $5000.

If you are a political candidate, don't think you are immune. RightHaven has gone after campaign web sites, which sometimes think they can simply cut-and-paste articles if those articles are about the candidate. They have gone after both democrats and republicans.

And for you blogger-user sites, they have gone after both left and right-wing aggregation sites like DU and FR. They've gone after indifivual bloggers. They sued a doctor for copying an article of interest to his patients. They sued a PR FIRM that does PR for the paper, for publishing an article about an event that they provided publicity for.

So, DON'T cut-and-paste articles. Purge your sites of any you have. THink hard about fair use, excerpt judiciously, include links and citations. I AM NOT A LAWYER, so don't think that I'm saying that if you do this, you will be OK. I can't say, but it is clear that you will be targeted if you just copy an article to your web site.

The days where a blogger can steal news stories, and get money from blog pimping advertisements, is over.

PWC Board votes to halt wasteful stimulus spending -- for now

2010-08-24T23:23:00.002-04:00

Tonight, in an emergency session, the Prince William County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 with 1 abstention to halt any action by any county employee to commit the spending of the latest Obama pork bill.

The action was made necessary when the school administration, with no input from either the PWC BOCS or the School Board, announced they would start hiring 180 teachers on provisional contracts and integrate them into the school system.

Defenders of this dubious move claimed that it would be too disruptive to add teachers later in the year, which presumes that we were going to do so, and ignores the much larger disruption if the money was not obtained, or the elected officials decided not to take the money -- requiring the firing of the provisional teachers, AND the re-arrangement of classes in the middle of the year.

Unfortunately, while the school administration was happy to give this story to the papers, and to start implementing the hiring, they had no financial people in town to discuss the matter with the board. Nobody at the meeting mentioned the implication of this -- which is that with the financial people on vacation, someone in the administration made a decision to spend money WITHOUT CONSULTING THEM. If on the other hand they DID get opinions, those opinions should have been brought to the meeting.

Several school board members showed up at the emergency session, called when several board members recognized the horrible mistake about to be made, and reasoned that they had to put a stop to it.

Only 5 board members were in town, just enough to make a quorum. This led to the most pathetic action of the evening, when Supervisor Principi, realising he was the only member of the five who wanted to vote to hire teachers without any guarantee of having the money, thought he could stop the vote by leaving the meeting room, thus denying the rest of the board a quorum.

Fortunately, Supervisor May, in a quick thinking action, called for the vote and took the count while Principi stood at the door, not even able to successfully pull off his own bizarre plot. It took the county attorney only a short time to decide that since Principi was standing in the room at the time of the vote, they had a quorum, and the vote counted.

No doubt Principi will be livid about this, and complain about some breach of proper procedure. Of course, he knows that if the school administration hadn't tried to pull this coup while Corey Stewart was out of the country, they'd have had the votes without him -- and likely at least one other missing board member would have joined the vote to stop the hiring.

The issue is still alive. The school board will meet to discuss the matter, and eventually the state will decide whether to take the money or not.

We learned from the meeting that the state is free to spend the money on next year's budget, which means in fact that there was no rush whatsoever to put the teachers in place now. If we wait, the money, while it is still rediculous pork spending, can be used to hire teachers we actually will need.

Congratulations to Supervisors May, Stirrup, Covington, and Nohe for recognizing a serious problem and acting swiftly to mitigate and prevent the damage. Shame on Principi for attempting to circumvent the democratic process by walking out on his responsibilities. This isn't Texas, Mr. Principi -- don't act like Texas Democrats, hiding in some other state to avoid granting quorums.

Now it's time for the School Board to do the right thing, and take this process deliberatively, and forget about trying to load up on teachers this year.

Our President is a Blooming Idiot, or a Liar

2010-03-17T22:43:00.003-04:00

Obama wandered on a Fox set, and probably wishes he hadn't. They actually asked him a real question, and he turned into a complete idiot.

Asked about special deals still in the bill, he tried to justify the "Louisiana Purchase", where Landreau got $300 million dollars for her vote, and was proud of it.

As you may know, they can't really just say "Louisiana's Senator gets $300 million for her vote". Instead, they have to write something that applies to everybody who meets the "qualifications". Then they put enough qualifiers in so that, when it's done, only the targeted item is covered.

As the Lousiana Purchase was described:

According to ABC News's Jonathan Karl, Majority Leader Reid's (D-NV) bill has a provision increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for "certain states recovering from a major disaster." The section goes on for two pages defining which "states" would qualify, including states that "during the preceding 7 fiscal years" have been declared a "major disaster area."
How many states does that apply to? Exactly one state: Lousiana,

Got that? It applies to a state that, in the PREVIOUS 7 years, had a disaster, and only Loiusiana qualifies.

But Obama, the clueless one, said this on a NATIONAL TV Interview:

OBAMA: That also — I'm giving you an example of one that I consider important. It also affects Hawaii, which went through an earthquake. So that's not just a Louisiana provision. That is a provision that affects every state that is going through a natural catastrophe.

Got that? The bill explicitly says it's for states that PREVIOUSLY had a disaster, but Obama lied and said it covers states that are GOING through a natural catastrophe. He also lied about Hawaii having an Earthquake. Unless he meant Haiti, and thinks that Haiti is one of our 57 states.

This is how Obama wants to pass Health Care, by lying about it. I am sick and tired of liberals claiming that we are wrong about Obama lying. We have two lies in this one paragraph.

Unless you want to argue that Obama is just stupid. Which is probably true.

Your Government at Work, Census Bus Edition

2010-03-16T23:22:00.002-04:00

Since in the next two weeks government will take over our health care, we ought to look around and see how government really operates. So today, let's look at the Census.

Or more specifically, the advertisement I heard today on the radio about the Census and public bus transportation. See, there's these 3 buses, and they take people around in the government-world of Census.

But if you don't fill out your Census, Government won't know how many people live in the big City. And if they don't know how many people there are, they won't know how many buses they need to serve the people, and you might not get a 4th bus that you need to get around.

Because, you see, in the Government world, services are not based on actually serving people. I mean, if it was, they'd just look at the bus and see how many people were sitting on it, and if they saw lots of empty seats, they'd know they had enough buses, and if the seats are all full, they'd add new buses.

But that's a market-based solution, and Government doesn't serve markets, it taxes people. So in Government-land, it makes no difference how many people actually RIDE the buses, it only matters how many people live in the city that they can tax to PAY for buses, and that they can claim they "provide service to" on the basis that the bus drives by their houses, or runs over their children, or whatever.

So we need the census to count the people so we can justify buying more buses we don't need to take people who don't want to ride to places they don't want to go.

Your Government At Work, Metro Edition

2010-03-16T23:13:00.002-04:00

As you may know, last weekend was "spring forward" time, when we "lose" an hour of sleep. At 2am, we advanced our clocks to 3am.

Of course, if you were awake during that time, nothing really happens. Your late-night TV movie doesn't skip an hour, you aren't suddenly one hour hungrier, your homework isn't one more hour done. It's a totally non-physical phenomena.

That is, unless you are the Government. To the Government, that missing hour makes all the difference in the world. Imagine you are going down to party with some friends in Georgetown. You take metro, like a good citizen, because your partying until 2am, and metro is open until 3am, so there's plenty of time to get home.

There you are, and the time is getting late. 1am, 130am, 150am. Around 2am, they are ready to close the bar, and you are off to the Metro to get back to your car. Except that Metro is closed.

Because you see, Metro closes at 3am. Normally, that's 3 hours after midnight. But it's "spring forward time", and 2am is 3am. So they obviously have to do SOMETHING, right? Now for normal folks, the obvious thing is to change your closing time to 4am. After all, people will still be partying until 2am, and will still need to drive home. Nobody says "hey, we lose an hour, so we'll quit the party an hour earlier". They say "hey, we'll sleep in an hour".

But that's not how Government works. To government, 3am is 3am, and if for some reason 1:59:59 is followed by 3am, then the right thing to do is to close an hour early.

The only question is, when they punched out, did their timecards say 3am, and did they get paid for the hour.

, noting that they close at 3am (and not 3 hours after midnight), decided that since 2am was really 3a

Kiss your doctor goodbye.

2010-03-16T22:48:00.002-04:00

There's at least a 1 out of 3 chance that, if Obamacare is "deemed to be passed", you won't be seeing your doctor anymore.

A Medical provider survey provides the grim reality of Obama's pipe dream of government takeover of our health system:

What if nearly HALF of all physicians in America suddenly stopped practicing medicine? Such a drastic decrease in the physician workforce could become a reality, depending upon how the healthcare reform legislation is implemented, and which version of health reform passes into law.

Imagine a world where half the doctors no longer practice. Now imagine that 30 million new people are seeking out non-emergency care, since they have been given free health care paid for with your tax dollars.

Imagine Disneyworld on a 75 degree sunny summer saturday. Sure, the rides look fun, but you can't get onto any of them.

But that's if they had a public option in the bill. What about the current bill? Not much better:

Interestingly, the numbers were not as dramatic, but still troubling, if the public option is not part of the equation. If health reform passes without the public option, 7.4% of physicians stated that they would quit practicing medicine, unless they were nearing retirement, in which case 21.8% said they would retire early, bringing the total loss of physician workforce to nearly one-third of physicians leaving medicine.

That means if there are 6 doctors in your office, and you've had to wait a week to get a routine office appointment, there will now be 4 doctors serving you and the newly blessed freeloaders.

OK, enough of the fearmongering. At least we'll have better health care, even if it's not actually available, right? Well, if there's one things doctors would know about, it's about the quality of care. And what doctors tell us?:

Over 50% of physicians who responded predict that a health reform would cause the quality of medical care to deteriorate in America. When asked how health reform could affect the quality of medical care, 40.7% stated it would "decline or worsen somewhat," while another 14.4% stated that the quality of medical care would "decline or worsen dramatically". If a public option is implemented as part of health reform, 64.1% of physicians predict that the quality of medical care in general will decline.

Fewer doctors, lower quality of care. Is that Change we can Believe In?

Health Care Suicide Bomber

2010-03-14T01:17:00.003-04:00

State Senate passes gun bills.

2010-03-14T00:03:00.002-04:00

Saturday's print edition of the Manasssas News/Messenger had this article: "Marsh manages to keep GOP-backed bills at bay". But so far as I can tell, this article is no longer available.

It's gone, and now the same paper has the article:
Senate approves controversial gun bills:

The Virginia Senate today approved two controversial House of Delegates gun bills that will allow permit holders to carry concealed handguns into bars and non-permit holders to conceal their firearms in cars.
...
The Senate votes on the House bills were split, with several rural Democrats siding with Republicans. House Bill 505 passed 25-15, while House Bill 885 passed 24-16. Democrats hold a 22-18 majority in the 40-member Senate.
...
Sen. David Marsden, D-Fairfax, called the bill allowing guns to be kept concealed in locked containers in cars “ill-advised public policy” that would increase the likelihood of firearms falling into the wrong hands.

Not sure what the previous rule was, but assuming it was that the gun had to be out in the open, I'm not sure I understand how hiding the gun makes it MORE likely for the wrong people to get hold of it.

Bolling explains why Senate move on Guns violates senate rules

2010-03-13T23:38:00.002-04:00

A transcript of a PDF sent out by Bolling: (All spelling errors are mine):

During yesterday's floor session, Senator Vogel asked that I provide the members of the Senate with some guidance on whether or not a Senate subcommittee has the authority to take final action on a bill referred to it by a committee chairman.

In providing this guidance I am relying on the Rules of the Senate as adopted on January 18, 2010. There are several Rules that are pertinent to this discussion and those rules will be referenced below.

Rule 27 of the Rules of the Senate provides that:

Bills or resolutoins originating in the House of Delegates and communicated to the Senate shall be read by title the first time when received and referred to the appropriate committee unless otherwise directed by the Senate

NOTE: I sight this Rule because the bills that have given rise to the questions at hand all appear to be bills that originated in the House of Delegates.

Rule 20 (c) of the Rules of the Senate provides, in part, that:

All committees shall be governed by the Rules of the Senate.

Rule 20 (h) of the Rules of the Senate provides that:

The Chair of any commitee may appoint subcommittees to consider a particular bill or Resolution or to consider matters relative to a portion of the work of the committee. Such subcommittees shal make recommendations to the committee.

The plain reading of Rule 20 (h) is clear. While subcommittees may consider bills referred to them, the only authority given to a subcommittee under the Rules of teh Senate is to make recommendations to the full committee. The Rules of the Senate do not authorize a subcommittee to take final action on any bill.

In addition, I would note that every other Rule of the Senate that vests the power to take any action on a bill vests that power in the committee to which a bill has been referred. For example:

Rule 20 (i) gives committees the power to confer with Committees of the House of Delegates
Rule 20 (j) outlines how committees may dispose of bills referred to them
Rule 20 (l) gives committees the power to refer the subject matter of bills to other agencies, commissions, boards, councils, or governmental or non-governmental entities
Rule 20 (m) authorizes committees to seek and obtain the services of citizens to assist in the review of legislation.

The Rules of the Senate appear to vest all power and authority in committees. No such power and authority is vested in subcommittees under the Rules of Senate, and, as noted above, Rule 20 (h) would appear to directly limit the power of subcommittees to the consideration of bills referred to them and the making of recommendations to the full committee on how those bills should be disposed of.

As you know, the Senate has long prided itself on compliance with the Rules and traditions of the Senate. It is important that the Rules and traditions of the Senate be complied with when they advance members ultimate goals and objectives, and even when they do not.

Accordingly, and based on my objective interpretation of the Rules of the Senate, it is my belief that Senate subcommittees do not have the authority to take final action on any bill or resolution referred to them. The subcommittee can consider such bills and resolutions, but ultimately, the subcommittee is only empowered to make recommendations to the full committee.

Some members have suggested that Senate sub-committees should have the power to defeat bills because that is the practice of the House of Delegates. Unfortunately, the practice of the House of Delegates has no impact on the application of the Rules of the Senate.

In addition, I would note that the Rules of the House of Delegates specifically provide that subcommittees can take final action on the bills referred to them. The pertinent House rule is set forth below:

Rule 18 - The Chairman, at his discretion, may refer legislation for consideration to a subcommittee. If referred to a subcommittee, the legislation shall be considered by the subcommittee. If the subcommittee does not recommend such legislation by majority vote, the chairman need not consider the legislation in full committee.

In other words, the Rules of the House of Delegates specifically authorize subcommittees to take final action on bills referred to them. No similar authorization is contained in the Rules of the Senate. If it is the Senate's desire to vest this power in subcommittees, the Rules should be changed to clearly give subcommittees that authority.

I hope that the information contained in this Memorandum will be helpful in determining how these issues should be resolved in the future in accordance with the Rules of the Senate.

WTB/

I fear for our country

2010-03-13T13:57:00.003-04:00

I have NEVER been as afraid for our country as I am today. Of course, I never would have suspected that our elected officials would propose, and our media would accept, the idea that a bill can be passed without voting on it.

Or that a bill that required 60 votes for senate rules could simply be changed after-the-fact with only 50 votes. Why would anybody in that last 10 vote for a bill, knowing that once they did, whatever was put in the bill to satisfy them could be removed by 50 of their colleagues?

Where does this leave Webb and Warner, who say they voted to move the process forward, certain that Reid would give them another chance to vote on the "final product"? Were they just stupid, or are they lying? How do they feel about Reid cutting Virginia off from having a final say on this bill?

Where are our house members, to stand up for what Virginia wants? We passed a bill with wide bipartisan support, rejecting the core of Obamacare. Why do they reject our will, for Nancy Pelosi?

The Nation has spoken, but our leaders aren't listening.

I close with these words from our Founders:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I fear for our country. Where are the great Democrats who will stand up to tyranny, say "Enough is Enough", and bring the Democratic Party, and our country, back from the precipice?

WSJ: The Cost-Control Illusion

2010-03-13T13:42:00.002-04:00

The WSJ explains how the democrats are lying about cost control, and that in fact Obamacare will destroy health care as we know it (this goes along with my discussions with doctors who say many will leave the profession because they will no longer be able to make money):

Above all other reasons, voters who oppose ObamaCare cite their fear over costs: They think it will cause their insurance premiums to soar and result in far higher taxes to fund a vast new entitlement. The public is right on both counts, which is why White House smokejumpers have been dispatched to put out this fire as the final votes approach.

Here are the reasons (I've taken snippets from the article to make a list:

If this new entitlement actually "saves" money, it will be the first in history.
When you subsidize something, you get more of it, which means higher demand for insurance and health-care services. Combine this with new mandates that have raised costs in every state where they have been tried, and you will get higher premiums.
The Cadillac tax. This is the 40% excise tax on high-cost insurance plans that the White House proposed because it lacked the political will to directly reduce the $250 billion annual tax subsidy for employer-based insurance. ... Not to worry, says Mr. Orszag, the tax would still create a "gradually increasing incentive to seek higher-quality and lower-cost health plans." In other words, some future Congress will impose the pain Democrats refuse to impose today.
About the "Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program," CBO says it will cut spending by $0 over 10 years
The "National Pilot Program on Payment Bundling"? Also $0.
But let's say Congress does cede power to this unelected group of wise men. The commission will then function much like similar bodies do in Europe—controlling costs by denying coverage for new technologies or patients at the end of life, or by limiting spending on certain treatments and thus creating longer waits.

They summarize:

ObamaCare's real cost-control plan boils down to this: First subsidize coverage so much that costs explode, raise taxes as much as possible to pay for it, and when that isn't enough hand power to an unelected committee to limit treatment and control prices by government order. This is what Democrats are voting for.

Actually, democrats are just voting to try to save their political behinds, in the hopes that their liberal puppeteers will turn out to re-elect them if they just take over the health care of this country.

A revolution is coming. If the democrats are stupid enough to defy the will of the people, and to violate the basic tenets of our legal process to cram through the takeover of our health care, there will be a backlash. Many states have already said they won't go along with it -- but the feds have the power, and they have the military to force the states into compliance.

Three decades ago, one or two states tried to take away the rights of some citizens to equal access to government services, and the federal government had to intervene to protect the rights of those citizens.

Today, it is likely that the federal government will use force against states who are trying to protect the rights of their citizens to associate with companies they wish to associate with, and to spend their money for their own health care in the way they see fit.

Obamacare will enslave us to insurance companies. It will enslave doctors to medical care. It will enrich the political class, kill our old and infirmed, and destroy the best health care in the world. Not only will we suffer, but the world will suffer as our companies, which are at the forefront of the fight for health in this world, are destroyed by marxists who know nothing about how the real world works, and have lived their lives by leeching off the success of others.

The destruction of civilization has begun. We have elected a majority who believes that money grows on trees, that the unproductive deserve the product of the hands of the productive, that the successful exist only to service the unsuccessful, and that they can get anything they want from the golden goose.

They have forgotten that a dead goose lays no eggs. Their brand of socialism will only work until they have taken all the money from those who have it. Then we will be done.

This is what happens when the object of an election is to "make history" rather than "find the best people to lead the country". We sure made history. Now we'll be stuck with the consequences.

Inadvertantly Correct Headline: Sacrifice Jobs for Obamacare

2010-02-28T16:06:00.003-04:00

In a most inadvertantly correct Headline award:

"Pelosi: Lawmakers Should Sacrifice Jobs for Health Care"

Because it is certain that if we pass Obamacare, we will sacrifice a LOT of jobs in this country. Not just the democrats in congress who should be fired for their incompetence.

But for Pelosi and the democrats, it's all about them, not about what havoc they will wreak on the rest of us:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. health care even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue's massive role in this election year.

Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program "This Week.""We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."

More like doing A JOB on the American people. But if we are lucky, they'll fail to pass this monstrosity, and still lose their jobs in November.

Bipartisans agree, Pelosi is an idiot.

2010-02-28T15:25:00.002-04:00

At least, by her definition of bipartisan, which apparently has nothing to do with two parties working together. From the Hill:

"Bipartisanship is a two-way street. A bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes. Republicans have left their imprint."

The public option, for example, has been stripped from the bill because Republicans were so adamantly against it, she said.

Actually, the public option was never in Reid's Senate bill, because the 60 DEMOCRATS in the Senate didn't want it. The house has never removed a single thing from a bill because of the objection of republicans only -- there's no need, unless the republicans get democrats to join them in bipartisan DISAGREEMENT.

But for Pelosi, the mere fact that Republicans have said they hate the bill would make the bill "bipartisan". Of course, she lives in a fantasy world were people will LOVE health care once it is passed:

"When the public sees what is in this bill...when we show them what the priorities are and what it's been boiled down to, what it means to them sitting around their kitchen table rather than us sitting around a table at Blair House, the response will be positive," Pelosi said.

In other words, the problem is that the great communicator, having made 400+ speeches, simply hasn't done enough to let people know what is in the bill. Or more accurately, that the american people are just too stupid to know what is good for them. John McCain rightly denounces that belief:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on "Meet the Press" that Americans are much better informed about the healthcare plan and reiterated the GOP platform that the process should be started from scratch.

To show how deluded Pelosi is, here is what she claims the health bill is about:

Pelosi outlined the top priorities for the legislation: affordability for the middle class, accountability of insurance companies and accessibility for more people.

But the bill will raise health care spending, raise the cost of health care coverage for individuals in the middle class, and will require huge government subsidies for people to pay for their own care. It forces everybody to buy insurance, making insurers LESS accountable because they won't have to compete for business. After taxing people for all sorts of health care purchases, and for having too much insurance, accessability will be the least of our problems.

THere is bipartisan opposition in the house to this bill. There is widespread bipartisan public opposition to this bill. Polls show americans of all political persuasions want congress to stop the charade, and put together a bill that will actually help people get better health care.

ObamaCare in a nutshell

2010-02-28T02:39:00.002-04:00

Obamacare is all about forcing people to pay more for insurance they don't need, so the government can tell everybody what health care they should get.

Nothing is better at illustrating this principle of Obamacare than Obama's own bizarre story of his ignorance over car insurance. From the Thursday Health Care Obama-Talk-Fest:

When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance. I had a beat-up old car. And I won’t name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company — let’s call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended and I called up Acme and said, I’d like to see if I can get my car repaired, and they laughed at me over the phone because really this was set up not to actually provide insurance; what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn’t serious insurance.

Now, it’s one thing if you’ve got an old beat-up car that you can’t get fixed. It’s another thing if your kid is sick, or you’ve got breast cancer.

Now, there's all sorts of lessons here. Like why was Obama paying monthly payments for insurance, instead of 6 month or yearly payments? Or why he would buy insurance that wasn't really insurance, or why he didn't know that the legal requirements would only be for liability coverage. Or that if someone hits your car, you are supposed to call THEIR insurance company.

But the real lesson is this. The guy bought what, by his own admission, was a "beat up old car". No doubt, if he had bought collision, his deductable would be higher than the value of the car. Probably he was lucky not to have collision insurance, since it would never pay off on his clunker.

But Obama's message was this: "Now, it’s one thing if you’ve got an old beat-up car that you can’t get fixed. It’s another thing if your kid is sick, or you’ve got breast cancer." In other words, he is saying that he was stupid not to have collision insurance that wouldn't really pay off, and that someone should have forced him to buy useless insurance, just like they forced him to buy liability insurance.

And likewise, Obamacare will force us to buy insurance we don't need, like coverage for your sick child when you don't have children, or coverage for breast reconstruction for men.

House operations are "A Mystery"

2010-02-28T01:59:00.003-04:00

Remember how the Democrats promised that they would run the House with such transparency that nobody would ever be surprised by something in a bill anymore? 72 hours of public viewing before they voted on anything? Remember the promises?

Thursday, the House was taking up what should have been a fairly routine intelligence bill (routine except that it was months late). Well, it shows up on the house floor, all ready to vote on, but with nobody apparently having read it yet. And what do we find in the bill? A provision to criminalize the intelligence service.

As told by the washington posts castoffs, the Politico:

“It’s a mystery how that language got in there,” Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said of the controversial intelligence bill provision backed by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.). “I think there are a lot of issues about the drafting of the McDermott amendment.”

A Mystery? You send a bill through the committee, where there are public hearings, and a public vote on each item in the bill. When done, the committee holds a final vote, and the bill comes to the floor of the house.

On the floor of the house, members offer up amendments, each of which are read by the clerk, debated, and voted on. After all amendments are voted on, there is a final vote on the bill.

So how could any words in the bill be "a mystery"? How could the former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee have no idea how a clause criminalizing interrogation made it into an intelligence bill?

The answer is simple -- Under democratic rule, the house no longer works as a democratic body. Instead, backroom deals, ignoring the rules, bills written in secret and voted on without any public hearing -- that's the norm. I'm sure Pelosi would skip the whole voting thing if she could figure out whether the media would go along with it.

Hopefully, the people are getting tired of the dictatorial, elitist leadership of the house and senate. We will have to suffer for a few more months, but come November, the people can have their congress back. Our brief dark night can end, and a new day dawn.

Sure, we'll still be stuck with an incompetent socialist President, but he's pretty much demonstrated that, apart from lying, he's not really committed to anything.

Pre-existing conditions in a nutshell

2010-02-27T13:03:00.002-04:00

With all the talk about pre-existing conditions in health care, it's important to understand what exactly we are talking about.

There are actually two separate issues that are interchangeably discussed as "pre-existing conditions", and since they are very different, and have different solutions, it confuses a lot of people.

The first is an actual "pre-existing-condition". Meaning I have a chronic disease, for which there is a known cost of treatment. I then go to an insurance company, and ask to be insured. If they cover the condition I already have, and if my payments don't include the total cost of the known treatment for the chronic disease, the insurance company is being stupid. "I'll pay you $20 if you give me back $30" is not a viable business strategy.

Now, a lot of people want to be able to force insurance companies to cover such pre-existing conditions, because they don't think of insurance as insurance, but rather as a pre-paid medical debit card. Imagine though going to a car insurance company and asking for a policy for the car you just crashed. Or to State Farm to ask them for a homeowner's policy for your house that is underwater because of a flood?

Oh, sometimes people do this -- it's called insurance fraud, and we put people in jail for it. But for some reason, we want insurance companies to take less money than they KNOW it will cost to provide care. And the insurance companies are actually on board -- so long as we also force healthy people to pay the same insurance premiums. So under this new system, a person who the insurance company knows will cost $500,000 over the next 10 years pays $100,000, while 10 other people who are most certainly only going to cost $50,000 average also pay $100,000, and it all works out.

Except that the 10 people who don't need coverage are forced to get it, and are forced to pay way more than what that coverage is worth. We tax the healthy to treat the sick.

OK, the 2nd "pre-existing-condition" is not an actual illness, but rather the propensity for the need of treatment. Really, this is a "risk" issue. Maybe it's a genetic marker which indicates a greater risk of illness. Or you had one disease, which makes it likely you could get another. You had a heart attack, so you could have more heart attacks. You had a transplant, so now you are compromised and likely to get sick. You have high blood pressure, so it might lead to other problems.

In these cases, the insurance company doesn't have a known cost of putting you on their books, but they know that if they take 10 people like you, it will cost them say twice as much as 10 people who are NOT like you. In the real world of insurance, you and the other 9 like you would pay twice as much in premiums as the other 10, and you would still come out ahead if you got sick, because your cost of treatment would be spread across others with similar changes of illness.

Now, in one sense, the 1st case is just the logical end-point of the 2nd, where the "risk probability" is 100 percent. most risks probabilities don't come close to certainty, and how we handle risk pools is a fundamentally different problem than how we handle known costs.

Of course, on Thursday the democrats attacked the idea of having "risk pools" for medical insurance. I'm betting though that they would be the first to say that smokers should have to pay more for coverage than non-smokers. I'm betting that because it isn't a "probability", it is a pre-existing condition.

Meaning: Democrats have already put large taxes on tobacco, to cover the "increased risk of medical treatment" needed by smokers. The state offers "health insurance", and they collect taxes to pay for it, and they add taxes to things that they think will make the health care the state pays for cost more. Democrats are also pushing to tax candy and soda, because those two lead to higher medical costs.

But apparently, if an insurance company wants to charge a person more because that person is likely to cost more, they are being evil.

Decent explanation of risk pools.

2010-02-27T12:57:00.002-04:00

From a National Review post:

If your car gets vandalized, it’s not your fault, but your insurance company may suspect you’re parking in a neighborhood prone to crime. You thus might see your premium rise upon renewal. The same logic applies to home insurance. Undoubtedly, this can mean that people in lower-income neighborhoods face relatively higher risk premiums than those in posh suburbs. Life insurance applications ask dozens of questions designed to assess how great a risk you pose. This means a missionary who travels to poor countries to help the destitute is likely to be identified as a risk taker and pay a penalty for living a life of good works. It’s not existentially fair, perhaps, but it’s not discrimination based on malice either.

The reference also has a description of how the private markets are handling the pre-existing condition problem, and how government could help without taking over and destroying the health care system.

Stupid Argument for Using Reconciliation

2010-02-27T12:36:00.002-04:00

Of all the arguments one could make for using reconciliation for the health care bill, the Democrat argument is the stupidest, most self-supporting argument one could make.

Realise that reconciliation itself is not a "nuclear option", or even a bad thing. Reconciliation is a specific part of the rules of the senate, and is perfectly valid to use in it's intended application. So saying that "Republicans used reconciliation" is a pretty stupid argument -- it's like claiming "Republicans passed bills with 50 votes, so we shouldn't be allowed to filibuster judges" -- it's apples and oranges.

Reconciliation is for passing bills that implement financial aspects of an already-passed budget agreement. The intention is for the senate to not get bogged down debating and blocking implementation of taxes or spending changes that have already been through the process during the budget debate.

So reconciliation is often used as an omnibus legislation, to implement the budget.

But the health care bill isn't a budget item. Sure, parts of it include budget items, like new taxes, and restricting money for medicare. But things like changing the rules for medicare advantage, creating new regulations, and the like are certainly not budget monetary items.

And what is more clear is that reconciliation has never before been suggested as a way to amend existing non-reconciliation legislation, before that legislation has been completed. In this case, they have competing bills between the house and senate, for which they can't find a common bill that gets a majority in the house and passes filibuster in the senate. This is hardly the first time this has happened -- in fact, it happens all the time.

The normal procedure is to go back to the drawing board, and find some other way to get everybody on board. Instead, since the democrats can't amend the current bill with the support of 60 senators, they want to pass the bill with a PROMISE that they will amend it by using budget rules. There were Senators like Webb who said they voted on the bill to MOVE THE PROCESS FORWARD, "knowing" that if the house democrats screwed around with the bill, they could vote against it when it came back and still stop it. Now they are being told "too bad, we lied to get your vote, and now we don't need it anymore".

Anyway....

But that isn't the stupidest argument. The stupidest argument is the one many democrats are using, that "reconciliation is a horrible way to do this, and it's only a 'last resort' if we can't pass the bill any other way".

That argument is essentially saying : If we can get 60 votes, that's what we will get, and we will only pass the bill with fewer than 60 votes if we get fewer than 60 votes".

Which I hope you can now see is a stupid argument. It's like saying "We'll go to the restaurant you choose, so long as you choose the one I like, otherwise we'll go to the one I like." Or, calling a coin flip by saying "you can have heads, unless the coin comes up heads, and then I get heads".

Here is an actual example, Ben Nelson: "[reconciliation is] my least favorite way to do something. It’s only after everything else fails, when there’s obstruction going on,” Nelson said.

Well, a filibuster is obstruction. And failing to break a filibuster is "everything else failing". So his argument is "reconciliation is to use if someone tries to filibuster and we can't break the filibuster". If true, then no filibuster would ever work against the majority.

Obama blames SecDef Gates for shortchanging troops.

2009-12-02T22:23:00.003-04:00

In Obama's widely panned Tuesday Night Speech, he made what appears to be a blatantly false claim:

Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.
That’s why, shortly after taking office, I approved a long-standing request for more troops.

Former Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld called Obama out on this lie, saying that if there is ANY evidence that the White House received requests during his time in office, they should make it public.

Obama, knowing he was caught in a lie, came up with a scheme -- Gibbs, his spokesperson, came out and agreed with a reporter's assumption that Obama was talking about requests made in 2008.

See, in 2008, the Sec. of Defense was Robert Gates. And today, he is still Defense Secretary, which means he reports to, and is under the control of Obama.

Of course, in reality the 2008 troop requests did work through the system, and as troops became available some were retasked to Afghanistan. But after the election, the incoming adminsitration put a hold on the troops, and took almost 3 months before finally releasing half of the request (hence Obama's "approved a long-standing request" is also misleading since they were long-standing because he asked them to be put on hold).

Now we've operated almost a year, and nothing more has been done; except that Obama forced his generals to HOLD their requests so he could claim there was no "request on his desk".

"I want to live forever" - Fame? No, Reid's Delusion of Obamacare

2009-11-21T23:11:00.002-04:00

Senator Harry Reid, who couldn't craft a health care bill that solved a SINGLE ONE of the "problems" the health care bill is supposed to fix, has a much bigger target in mind -- immortality:

"Today we [decide] whether to even discuss one of the greatest issues of our generation," Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said shortly before the vote. "Whether this nation will finally guarantee its people the right to live free from fear of illness and death, which can be prevented by decent health care for all."

Obamacare/House version would reduce senior care

2009-11-16T02:23:00.002-04:00

Last time, I chronicled how the Obamacare bill passed by Pelosi would raise health care cost by hundreds of billions of dollars -- contrary to the stated goal of lowering health care costs.

Today, from the Washington Post, we find that Obamacare also fails to protect people's existing insurance, another "promise" from the great President Obama, who breaks promises on a daily basis.

Specifically, the Post notes that Senior Citizens are a prime target of Pelosi and the Democrats, because Pelosi's Bill would reduce senior care:

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

Again, we could have known this fact before the House voted on the bill. In fact, Pelosi certainly knew this -- which is why she pushed for a rediculous schedule, making at least one member miss his own son's wedding so she could pass health care destruction in the dead of saturday night.

The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.

Not that Democrats want old people to just die or anything. No serious person would try to argue that a political party wants people to die. Oh wait -- that's exactly what the crazy elected Democrats DO argue. But Republicans aren't the ones cutting billions from old people's health care.

This new study also points out the tremendous increase in costs under this plan:

In the face of greatly increased demand for services, providers are likely to charge higher fees or take patients with better-paying private insurance over Medicaid recipients, "exacerbating existing access problems" in that program, according to the report from Richard S. Foster of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Oh well, it sucks to be an old person dependent on government-run health insurance when the Democrats control the government.

Who Is Failure? (whoever thinks that is a sentence?

2009-11-14T22:24:00.003-04:00

Who Is Failure? Apparently, Barack Obama, who also might be a Miserable Failure.

I only wish he was more of a failure. He is still "succeeding" enough to destroy the country.

Obamacare/House version RAISES health costs

2009-11-14T20:39:00.002-04:00

Obama and the Democrats are pushing health care reform by claiming that costs are going up, and we need to stop that. This is the only thing that the public seems to agree with them about -- the public would LOVE to save money on health care.

But no bill pushed by the Democrats yet has done a thing to lower costs. And the bill that just passed the house will actually increase costs, by almost 300 BILLION dollars:

The House-approved healthcare overhaul would raise the costs of healthcare by $289 billion over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

The CMS report is a blow to the White House and House Democrats who have vowed that healthcare reform would curb the growth of healthcare spending.

I don't see how this is a "blow" to house democrats. Pelosi already forced her side to rush the vote on their bill, before they had this analysis. Realise that if they had simply waited a week, they could have had this information BEFORE they voted.

This of course explains WHY Pelosi rushed the vote. She knew, and the democrats all knew, that their bill did nothing to fix health care. They just wanted to take over health care, because they want to run everything, and make all of us serve them.

Pelosi is a power-hungry politician. She wants to rule the world. She is willing to destroy our health care to get what she wants. We need to stop her.

Obama Disrespects our country (again again)

2009-11-14T12:07:00.008-04:00

Obama is the President of the United States, which we as Americans say is the greatest Country in the world, a Country that bows to no other.

Obama won't put his hand on his heart for our country. But he will bow to foreign leaders, bringing shame to our country.

And he apparently is the only head of state to do so, as this animated picture shows:

I am getting sick and tired of our President denigrating our country, apologizing for all of us for things that deserve no apology, selling out our principles for marxists and socialists, turning our country into a laughingstock of the world.

Obama Disrespects our country (again)

2009-11-13T00:44:00.002-04:00

During the election, a picture was circulated showing that Obama refused to salute the American flag during the playing of our national anthem.

At the time, some people argued that it wasn't universally accepted that one should put their hands on their heart for the anthem, but only when saying the pledge.

This even though anybody who's been at a ball game, or at the entrance to a theme park, knows better.

But now Obama is the President of the United States. As such, he's not just being himself, he's representing all of us.

And still he disrespects the flag, and our country:

Unless, of course, his heart is in his, well, you know.

Obama's lies exposed again.

2009-11-09T01:37:00.003-04:00

Let me get this straight. Saturday, Obama says the House bill, as written, meets all his qualifications. One of those qualifications he's been making is that the bill did not fund abortions.

Saturday night, the Stupak Amendment passes. This amendment bans abortion funding from the House bill that Obama claimed already had none.

In response to the Stupak Amendment, abortion rights advocates are livid:

Abortion rights advocates called the measure the biggest setback to women's reproductive rights in decades.

So Obama promises a bill that has no tax money for abortion. Obama claims the House bill meets that promise. An amendment is passed which removes abortion from the bill. Abortion advocates denounce the amendment for setting back women's reproductive rights.

Is there any wonder why a majority of Americans no longer trust President Obama to tell us the truth about health care? Obama lies with such audacity that Bill Clinton is a piker in comparison. Obama's promises about ANYTHING cannot be trusted -- he is constantly taking back his promises, be it on Afghanistan, taxing the middle class, missle defense, closing Guantanamo -- you name it, Obama has lied about it.

BTW: Currently, many insurance policies offer abortion. Perversely, because the democrats are taking over our health care, many more people will need government subsidies to afford the higher costs of insurance, so many people will lose abortion coverage, since they now have it in a private coverage, but with Obamacare they won't be able to afford their premiums, they'll have to take government subsidies, and therefore will be unable to get abortion coverage.

The government has no business screwing around with, or funding, the nation's medical insurance. If the government would keep it's nose out of our affairs, we wouldn't have to pass abortion funding bans, because government wouldn't be funding anything to begin with.

And as much as I loathe abortion (killing babies just doesn't appeal to me like it does to Nancy Pelosi), I really would like ALL of us to not have tax dollars pay for our health insurance.

Democrat's Health "Reform" - Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

2009-10-18T08:53:00.002-04:00

The Washington Times re-iterates a fundamental goal of the Democrats in the "health care reform" bill: "Young Adults Could Face Sharp Rise":

Young adults, a group that helped elect President Obama last fall, could have the highest costs to bear but the most to gain under the health care overhaul proposals in Congress.

The reform bills require insurance companies to reduce the disparities between what they charge the young and the old, with potential to dramatically raise prices for young adults.

Young people don't need health insurance as it exists today. They mostly just need catastrophic coverage, to cover for the really unexpected event like a car accident, a heart attack, or some other rare medical problem.

But state insurance regulations often force policies to cover all sorts of things that young people don't care about -- like a single male having to pay extra to cover Erectile Disfunction, Birth Control pills, abortion and gynecological services, and long-term nursing care.

This is why so many people are uninsured -- the kids just don't see a benefit worth the cost:

Young adults have often been overlooked in the battle to extend health insurance coverage to all Americans. They have the highest rate of uninsured status of all age groups, either because they can't afford it on fresh-from-college salaries or they hope that their age will save them from high-cost medical care. A 2008 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that young adults, ages 19 to 29, make up 29 percent of the uninsured population in the United States.

But at least the insurance companies are allowed to sell the over-blown policies to the young people at a cost less than that for people who will actually USE their services.

Americans understand the principle. If you are a young driver, you pay more for car insurance because you will tend to have more accidents. Life Insurance costs more as you get older, or if you have a history of heart disease, or are a smoker, because you will likely die sooner. Homeowners insurance gives you discounts if you have smoke detectors, better locks, and a fire hydrant nearby, because your house is less likely to burn completely.

But medical insurance is already skewed, mostly by employer-based programs. Because while many companies DO charge more for their older employees, it is generally based on salary, and isn't nearly enough of a difference to reflect the actual costs. That's because it isn't offered as a cost-effective insurance, but as an EMPLOYMENT BENEFIT.

Now, the democrats want to force the same thing on ALL MEDICAL INSURANCE.:

"Allowing insurers to charge older Americans vastly higher premiums simply because of their age is discrimination, pure and simple," Mr. Kerry said. "Insurers must compete based on price, value and customer satisfaction, not by avoiding Americans based on their age or health."

But in true socialist government form, the democrats insist that charging young people a lot more for their insurance won't be a problem -- Because they will get taxpayer-funded subsidies:

But proponents say that much of the new costs young people would face would likely be picked up by tax subsidies that are being designed to help low- and middle-income people buy coverage.

The current plans call for subsidies to be available to individuals and families with incomes up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level. This year, that level is $10,830 for an individual and $22,050 for a family of four.

If this wasn't going to increase the deficit, the end result instead would be that government regulation would drive up costs for everybody, but force insurers to take less money from old people and more money from young people, while old people had to simultaneously pay more taxes so that the government could take the money and give it to young people so they could pay for the higher insurance costs.

The key being that this has nothing to do with health care, and EVERYTHING to do with having 85% of the people in this country dependent on the government giving them money. Because once everybody needs the government to survive, the Democrats will have all the power they crave to tell people what to do, like forcing them to by unncessary medical insurance.

McDonnell gets two endorsements

2009-10-18T08:48:00.002-04:00

The one is a positive endorsement from the Manassas News/Messenger.

The second endorsement is that the Washington Post endorsed Creigh Deeds. Since the WP endorsement is based solely on the willingness to raise taxes, that's one endorsement McDonnell neither could get, or would want.

The Post tries to also make their endorsement about McDonnell's "thesis". But their hypocrisy on that point makes their argument for Deeds worse -- just three months ago the WP said the opposite things about McDonnell, based on his record, from what they say now.

Since the WP has been writing for the past month for the sole purpose of providing quotes for Creigh Deeds to use in his advertisements, there really was no question they would endorse the man they endorsed in the Democratic primary -- in for a penny, in for a pound.

More on the endorsements later.

Health Care Reform -- Bribes and Punishment

2009-10-18T08:22:00.002-04:00

All you need to know about the corruption of Washington DC, and the danger of allowing the Federal Government to meddle in our private affairs, can be found in a Washington Post article (Sunday, October 18, 2009), mockingly headlined "Medical Device Makers Court Unlikely Allies". I say "mockingly" because the facts reveal something more of a shotgun wedding born out of spitefulness, hatred, and anger rather than mutual respect:

But the two camps have come together to defend a powerful home-state industry in the political doghouse: medical device firms.

The companies, whose products range from $3,000 heart stents to $30,000 implantable defibrillators, refused to offer direct financial concessions earlier this year to help pay for health-care reform, unlike drugmakers, hospitals and other health- care players.

The move angered Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, who view the industry as a key contributor to soaring health-care costs, and led the panel to approve a $40 billion fee on device makers over the next 10 years.

So a private industry providing useful services to the people of our country was "asked" to "voluntarily" change what they charged for their product, and they rightly told the feds to stick to their constitutional authority.

And the democrats got ANGRY, because someone dared to stand up to their authority. And they decided to punish those who made them angry, by using the power of government to tax them, thus driving up the costs of the medical devices to the people who need them most.

And what will those taxes paid for by the citizens be used for? To pay off those other industries who bowed down to the democrats and did what they were told.

This article also reveals the inconvenient truth about rising health care costs. Our costs are going up not because things are getting more expensive, but because we have businesses offering NEW treatments and NEW hope for people with medical problems.

In the case of the medical device manufacturers, their devices are making people's lives better, and people are willing to pay money for the new treatments. Nobody is forcing anybody do pay for this, you could always pretend it was 10 years ago and the devices weren't available. But why wouldn't you pay money for something better? Well, the democrats don't think that makes any sense at all:

The industry's efforts are made more difficult by evidence that the push to sell pricey medical devices, from artificial joints to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, has been a significant contributor to skyrocketing health-care costs in the United States. One manufacturer, New Jersey-based ReGen Biologics, has come under fire for aggressively lobbying the Food and Drug Administration to gain approval for a knee-surgery device.

It makes it sound like we don't need or want these devices. But another dirty little secret -- state governments force medical insurance plans to cover things like this, because of lobbying pressure, and then since it "doesn't cost anything", doctors will approve the devices.

But instead of actually reforming how we deliver health care, the democrats are pushing more regulation, more distortion of the costs. They don't care that medical devices may be unnecessary -- instead they are going to TAX them, which means the government will be MORE LIKELY to include these devices in health insurance requirements, because the government will need the tax dollars.

Steven Nissen, chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, called device makers "a Wild, Wild West" industry that uses aggressive marketing, including confidential payments to doctors, to drive up demand for its products. "Given the way they have encouraged overutilization, it makes sense that some of that should be given back to help bend the cost curve," he said.

Why not ban "confidential payments" to doctors? Because the suggestion that doctors are doing unncessary surgery against their patient wishes simply because they get bribes has already been shown to be false -- it's just a canard used to argue that there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

This is the democrat's message. You can't trust your doctors, they area on the take. You can't trust the companies that have made life-saving drugs for you, they just want to make money. You can't trust your insurance company, you can't trust your nurses, you can't trust the hospital.

But you CAN trust 58 democrats in the Senate to do what is right for you, because they would never act out of anger to punish their adversaries. Oh wait, they just did.

Creigh Deeds -- Tearing down Virginia's Universities.

2009-10-14T22:51:00.003-04:00

Creigh Deeds, desperate to get liberals in Northern Virginia to vote for him, while not turning off the rest of Virginia, is running targeted ads attacking a solid Virginia University in Virginia Beach.

In the ad, Creigh Deeds claims that we should vote for Deeds rather than McDonnell because McDonnell attended Regent University, which Deeds derisively misnames.

Regent University is an accredited university which graduated over 1000 students last year, including many Virginia residents, all of whom must wonder what Creigh Deeds has against them, since Deeds is telling prospective employees that in Deeds' opinion, they shouldn't be hired.

Regent University (its undergraduate school and graduate schools) is accredited or certified by the following bodies:

Regent University is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award associates, baccalaureate, masters, and doctorate degrees. Contact the Commission on Colleges at 1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, Georgia 30033-4097 or call 404.679.4500 for questions about the accreditation of Regent University.
Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) www.chea.org

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV)—certification of the Commonwealth of Virginia. www.schev.edu

The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS), accredits the School of Divinity. The Commission on Accrediting of the Association of Theological Schools, 10 Summit Park Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15275. www.ats.edu

The American Bar Association (ABA), accredits the School of Law. The Accreditation Committee and the Council of the Section, 321 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL 60610. www.abanet.org

The American Psychological Association (APA), accredits the psychology programs of the School of Psychology & Counseling. Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation, 750 First Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242. www.apa.org

The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), accredits the counseling programs of the School of Psychology & Counseling. 5999 Stevenson Avenue, Alexandria, VA 22304. www.cacrep.org

The Regent University School of Education's educational leadership and teacher preparation programs, which are designed to prepare competent, caring, and qualified professional educators is accredited by the Teacher Education Accreditation Council for a period of five years, from January 9, 2009 to January 9, 2014. This accreditation certifies that the educational leadership and teacher preparation programs have provided evidence that they adhere to TEAC's quality principles. Teacher Educational Accreditation Council, One Dupont Circle, Suite 320, Washington, DC, 20036, phone 202.466.7236. www.teac.org/

Apparently, Creigh Deeds thinks he knows more than these organizations, and believes that people who graduate from this Virginia University should be treated as 2nd-class citizens, held up to ridicule and mocking by political candidates who want to be Governor.

This is rediculous. How could we put a man into the Governorship who has so blatantly attacked thousands of our young men and women who worked so hard to earn college degrees from our own universities?

Creigh Deeds - Unfit for Duty

2009-10-14T22:38:00.002-04:00

Does Creigh Deeds hate Virginia's universities?

How else would you explain Deeds telling his campaign to launch an attack on the graduates and leadership of an accredited Virginia University?

In a commercial that Deeds must pray is only seen by liberals in Northern Virginia, Deeds attacks McDonnell for attending Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Deeds then attacks McDonnell for serving on the board for the University for 7 years. Imagine any other candidate trying to attack someone for serving a Virginia institute of higher learning.

Here are the current list of trustees. I'm guessing none of them are going to vote for Deeds, after he essentially put them all down:

Mr. G. Conoly Phillips, Chairman
Bishop Wellington Boone
Dr. Benjamin S. Carson
Adm. Vernon E. Clark (USN Ret.)
Dr. Chauncey Crandell
Mrs. Roberta Eldred
Mr. Jim L. Funari
Mr. Joseph R. Gregory
Mrs. Roberta P. Hromas
Mr. Thomas J. Knox Jr.
Dr. Kay Peng Khoo
Mr. Michael D. Little
Mr. Howard W. Long
Mr. William L. Maynard
Mrs. Cheryl McLeskey
Mr. David V. Melilli
Mr. Lowell W. Morse
Mrs. Dede Robertson
Dr. M. G. Robertson
Mr. Timothy B. Robertson
Mr. Thomas M. Saltsgiver
Dr. Jay A. Sekulow
Mr. Daniel C. Sellers Jr.
Mr. Robert O. Snelling Sr.

Let's just look at one of these people that Creigh Deeds apparently thinks is unfit for duty because he's a trustee at Regent University -- Admiral Vernon Clark:

Admiral Clark served aboard the destroyers USS John W. Weeks (DD 701) and USS Gearing (DD 710). As a Lieutenant, he commanded USS Grand Rapids (PG 98). He subsequently commanded USS McCloy (FF 1038), USS Spruance (DD 963), the Atlantic Fleet's Anti-Submarine Warfare Training Center, Destroyer Squadron Seventeen, and Destroyer Squadron Five. After being selected for flag rank, Admiral Clark commanded Carl Vinson Battle Group/Cruiser Destroyer Group Three, Second Fleet, and United States Atlantic Fleet.

Let's skip ahead:

Admiral Clark has also served as the Deputy and Chief of Staff, United States Atlantic Fleet; the Director of Operations (J3) and subsequently Director, of the Joint Staff.
Admiral Clark became the 27th Chief of Naval Operations on July 21, 2000, relieving Admiral Jay L. Johnson. In 2001, Clark was considered to be on the "short list" of choices for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the eventual pick was Air Force Gen Richard Myers [1]

Wow, he was almost the Chairman of the JCOS, but Creigh Deeds thinks he's unfit for duty because he's a trustee at Regent University.

Admiral Clark's personal decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (three awards), the Navy Distinguished Service Medal (two awards), the Legion of Merit (three awards), the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal (four awards), the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, and various service and campaign awards, including the Joint Meritorious Unit Award (two awards), Navy Unit Commendation, Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation, Battle Efficiency Award (two awards), National Defense Service Medal (three awards), Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, Vietnam Service Medal (two campaigns), Southwest Asia Service Medal (one campaign), Sea Service Deployment Ribbon (six awards), and Navy and Marine Corps Overseas Service Ribbon

But forget all those awards and honors. Creigh Deeds says that Admiral Clark is unfit for duty, because he's a trustee at Regent University.

Since his retirement, Clark has been honored with the Eisenhower Award from the Business Executives of North America and the Distinguished Sea Service Award from the Naval Order of the United States. Clark was elected to the board of directors of Raytheon in December 2005 and the board of directors of SRI International in March 2007.[

Raytheon and SRI International think Admiral Clark's an OK guy, but they must be wrong, because Creigh Deeds says this man is unfit for duty.

But you know, maybe Creigh Deeds is the one who is unfit for duty.

Creigh Deeds has a plan for Tables

2009-10-12T01:33:00.003-04:00

If you've been listening to Creigh Deeds on the campaign trail, you might think his economic recovery plan involves encouraging the manufacture of new tables for Virginia. After all, he plans to spend a lot of time around tables, putting things on tables, and discussing what's on the tables. And with all the people he wants to get together at tables, we're probably going to need some more tables.

Of course, tables tend to stay in one place, and people around tables tend to just talk a lot. To get traffic moving, we need more than table-talk.

In this WTOP interview, Deeds apparently mentioned tables over 14 times in 11 minutes:

Democrat Creigh Deeds says in a radio interview that offering detailed positions on transportation funding would kill chances of passing it if he's elected governor. "In an appearance Friday on WTOP's politics show, the state senator repeated his familiar mantra that ‘everything is on the table' for transportation funding, including new taxes."

The magic table is expected to solve all our transportation problems:

The only approach that's worked on transportation in the last thirty years is the approach employed by Governor Baliles in 1986 and that's the approach I'm gonna take. Everything to fix transportation is on the table. And I want to bring everybody to the table to bring ... to create that solution. And I'm gonna do it next year. Everything's on the table that has a nexus to transportation,

The Baliles approach Deeds mentions from 1986 was imposing a 17+ cent gas tax. Which I guess is why the gas tax is about the only idea Deeds specifically mentions as "on the table", and why Deeds says the Baliles' approach (raising gas taxes?) is the approach Deeds will take.

More table talk:

I'm going to be the next governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and were going to have an open and honest discussion with Democrats and Republicans around the table and we're going to consider all the options because the bottom line is we cannot grow, we cannot prosper if we continue to sit in traffic.

Instead of sitting in traffic, we'll all be sitting around the table.

But I'm guessing that the people of Virginia want to move forward, they want to solve this problem and I've got the only real realistic solution to get it fixed and that's bringing everybody to the table, leaving everything on the table, except taking money away from education and having an honest discussion about transportation.

I wonder if there will be food at the table? And if there is, will we be able to take that off the table, or will we have to leave all the food spoiling on the table?

Mark, I said that everything is on the table when it comes ... that has a nexus to transportation. We've got a significant problem, we have to raise something in excess of a billion dollars.

I wonder how big a table you need to be able to put a billion dollars on it.

Mark, I have said that everything that has a nexus to transportation is on the table. If you look at the different approaches that have been taken by governors since Baliles to address transportation - they've all failed, and part of the reason they've failed is because they've identified, they started out with something very specific that has become polarizing.

Well, the last 8 years certainly they've failed, but I think that had more to do with the inability of the democratic governors to actually put together a plan, not because they couldn't find a table.

I think if we leave as much on the table as possible, that we bring as many people to the table as possible, we have more areas we can agree on. This is such an urgent issue that has to be addressed I think sooner rather than later - it has to be addressed next year, my first year as governor. I want the best chance for success and I think that leaving more things on the table will give us that opportunity.

I wonder if this will be an indoor or outdoor table. It apparently will have lots of stuff all over it, a billion dollars lying around, and be surrounded by as "many people" as we can possibly fit.

I think I've figured out the secret to this transportation plan. If we just get enough people around the table, it will get them off the roads so traffic will move better.

President Obama trashes President Obama's policy.

2009-09-18T23:19:00.002-04:00

When the President cancelled America's missle defense shield designed to protect the eastern seaboard from long-range Iranian missle strikes, he was going against the advice of -- President Obama, who said in April:

So let me be clear: Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbors and our allies. The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles. As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven.

Or, as we have said so many times before, EVERY PROMISE Obama makes comes with an expiration date.

MIchelle Obama REALLY wants to take over your health care.

2009-09-18T23:02:00.002-04:00

Powerline's John Hindraker makes a great observation about Michelle Obama's foray into the Health Care debate:

Today Michelle Obama got into the act, proclaiming that the current health care system "crushes women":

Michelle Obama said women are being "crushed by the current structure of our health care" because they often are responsible for taking care of family illnesses, arranging checkups and monitoring follow-up care.

"Women are the ones to do it," she said to an audience of 140 people, including representatives from groups such as the Women's Chamber of Commerce and the National Council of Negro Women. "Mothers are the ones that do it. And many women find themselves doing the same thing for their spouses."

I really don't understand this. Under Obamacare, will someone other than mothers (or fathers) arrange checkups for their kids? Take care of family illnesses? Make sure the kids are taking their medicine and get follow-up care if they need it? Is there really anything like this in any of the Democrats' proposals? If mothers (and fathers) don't arrange their kids' checkups, who will? Someone else's mother or father, apparently. No doubt they'll care more and do a better job.

The Obama administration seems to be bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase "nanny state."

I have no idea what Michelle is really thinking. However, it seems that she finds it really burdensome to take care of her kids. I hadn't really thought that the drudgery of picking up the prescription for my son's ear infection was really a drawback of the American health care system, but apparently Michelle thinks taking care of her kids is just too onerous, and someone ought to fix that for her.

Seriously, this is exactly why nobody believes President Obama anymore on health care, or anything else. Trying to sell your plan by talking up it's good points, while lying about it's bad points -- that's just dishonest.

But making up an entire class of horrible things your health care plan does nothing about, and suggesting that you will make it all better, is shear desperation.

Next thing you know, Obamacare will be shortening your commute to work, and helping you pick up women at bars.

Meanwhile, be on the lookout for amendments in the Senate providing for government workers who will come to your house and check your child's temperature.

Why do Democrats support $500 billion in Medicare Waste/Fraud/Abuse?

2009-09-16T19:37:00.002-04:00

MSNBC's First Read wonders why, if the President can so easily identify over $500 billion in Medicare waste, he hasn't done anything?:

Speaking of health care, how has Obama gone from touting $300 billion in Medicare waste/fraud/abuse savings in June as part of his plan to pay for health care to now claiming the White House has found $500-$600 billion in these savings. The fact is the president still hasn't release a detailed plan in general, let alone gotten into the "how to pay for" weeds when it comes to exactly how they found yet another $200 billion in cuts. This actually gets at the nut of the president's potential credibility problem: If there is so much money in waste/fraud/abuse in the Medicare system, then why do we continue to let it happen? Why are we waiting so long to deal with it? The average cynical voter is thinking, “Well, the president may be well meaning, but the bureaucracy that is the American government let this waste/fraud/abuse happen once, who is to say they won't let it happen again?”

I agree with that sentiment, but I also see this a bit differently.

Obama has claimed that there is over $500 billion being wasted in Medicare. In his speech last Wednesday, he said that he could eliminate this $500 billion in spending without taking a single treatment away from a single Medicare patient.

I think he was lying, which makes me a racist. But let's for the moment assume he was telling the truth. The government is throwing away $500 billion, Obama KNOWS it is happening, he KNOWS how to stop it from happening.

Why hasn't he stopped it already? Most waste/fraud/abuse is because of the law NOT being followed, in which case Obama should be able to stop this without congressional action. So why hasn't he done so? Some might argue it's because he needs to keep the idea as part of the health system takeover plan, but that's wrong. If he actually could show even 10% of that savings now, it would probably win him a dozen republican votes in the house, and a few in the senate.

So maybe it's because he needs a congressional vote. But I can guarantee you that Republicans in the house and senate would show up on a Sunday to vote for a bill that elimated $500 billion in useless spending. So, if Obama is telling the truth, and all we need is a bill, then it must be that the Democrats running congress WANT to waste $500 billion dollars in our medical system.

Of course, it's much easier to believe the most likely truth -- there are no "medicare savings" from waste/fraud/abuse crackdown. Obama might have some idea how to cut payments to doctors and PRETEND it won't hurt the people on Medicare, but it will. The Democrats don't really care if they pay for their bill, they just want to SAY they will pay for it.

But the sad fact is, in this case, deciding the democrats are liars is actually the less critical opinion to have; the alternative is that they just want to waste $500 billion dollars of taxpayer money.

Was "You Lie" Racist? Addressing the "racers".

2009-09-16T19:16:00.003-04:00

In a discussion in a Washington Post community forum, EJ Dionne asks a question that deserves consideration:

I’m surprised that it so shocks my friend Ramesh that many Americans – and not just African-Americans -- are asking why it is that only when we have a black man as president has a member of Congress felt he could stand up and shout, “You lie!”

First, I should say Joe Wilson was wrong, entirely wrong, to shout this, or anything else, during the speech. In fact, if Wilson thought Obama was lying, he should have shouted "point of order", and asked the chair if Obama was breaking house rules by saying members of the house had lied about his plan.

Of course, Joe Wilson knew he was wrong, and he apologized immediately to the President.

Second, it is well-known that Democrat members of the house had accused Bush of lying, on the house floor, violating the same rule Wilson was accused of violating. I don't think the rule was why Wilson was wrong -- I think yelling "Preach it" would have been just as wrong.

Third, it is also well-known that Democrats actually booed the President during a state of the union speech -- an act that was certainly as damaging to the "decorum" of the house as shouting at the President. But the Republicans certainly knew that was wrong, and made a big deal of it at the time, even though they didn't have a vote to condemn the Democrats.

But what of the question? Nobody, even in 2005, actually shouted at the President during his SOTU. So why would Wilson do so here?

Well, here is the missing piece -- This is the first time in my memory that a President has requested a joint session of congress for the purpose of making a campaign speech attacking members of the other party, and lying about it. The State of the Union speeches are constitutionally required reports, and generally the Presidents have been well-mannered, giving their priorities but not calling members of the body liars.

The only non-SOTU speech I can think of was Bush's Sept 20, 2001 address to the nation, when he presented the nation's plan of action in response to the 9/11 attacks. There was nothing partisan in that speech for anybody to yell about.

So we don't have to invoke racism to explain this "unique" event -- the shout was an irrational, but not unpredictable, result of the already unique and undecorous use of the solemnety of a joint session of congress for a partisan political speech by a President falling in the polls and struggling to remain relevant.

The idea that Wilson would never have shouted at a President Biden is ludicrous. In fact, I would argue that the attacks on a President Biden, doing exactly what President Obama has done, would be much harsher -- precisely because Obama is black.

Years of invoking racism in our country have made everybody think twice before saying anything bad about a black person, especially in public. Even thrice-removed comments can cost you your job (see Trent Lott's offhand comment at Strom Thurmond's birthday party speaking kindly of his presidential run).

And look around you -- every person who has said anything in opposition to Obama's policies has been called racist. President Jimmy Carter is only the latest to say that if you don't want universal health care and the destruction of our economic system, you must be racist.

So, I guess I must be a racist, because I still love my country, and I think that what is best for my country, for ALL of us, is for Obama's plans to fail. Not because Obama is black, but IN SPITE of it.

AP finds multiple lies in Obama's speech

2009-09-10T09:58:00.002-04:00

Call me shocked, but the AP was kind enough to point out some of the lies in Obama's speech. Rather than write my own post about this in depth, go look at this blog, which has a pretty good write-up: AP Fact-Checks the speech -- Obama was pretty much lying through his teeth

The AP's biggest focus was on this whopper:

OBAMA: "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or in the future. Period."
THE FACTS: Though there's no final plan yet, the White House and congressional Democrats already have shown they're ready to skirt the no-new-deficits pledge.

And their argument doesn't include the fact that every government plan costs multiple times what it is said to cost, or that the dems method of taxes to pay for the plan violates Obama's promise not to raise any taxes on 95% of america.

They also note that the house bill doesn't have any verification for illegals, and that Obama can't really promise that you will keep your health insurance because the bills in the house don't stop employers from dropping the insurance, and in fact will pretty much require it over time.

Obama's Problem: We don't trust him, or government

2009-09-10T09:22:00.002-04:00

Obama made a speech last night. It was the same speech he's been making for months, full of promises, empty of specifics, laced with personal attacks on people who don't agree with him, and sprinkled throughout with lies.

But in the end, he failed to address the fundamental problem the American people have with his still non-existant "health care plan". Simply put, we do not trust Obama, we do not trust the Democrats, and mostly we do not trust government to do what they say, or accomplish the goals they specify.

Obama said this speech would include compromises with the Republicans. I saw two -- first, he "compromised" about how many americans are uninsured, because he stopped lying about it for one speech. Last month, Obama said 47 million americans were uninsured. Last night, it as 30 million. As one commentator put it, and I paraphrase, "at that rate if we do nothing we'll solve the problem by November".

The second was that he mentioned legal reform. Unfortunately, there is no legal reform in any of the bills being considered, so unless they are going to go re-write the whole thing, his promises otherwise are empty.

On most other points, he fell flat. He called his opponents liars, but then objected when someone called him a lie. He said we were lying about rationing end-of-life care, then acknowledged medical boards which would determine what care was "cost-effective". He said we were lying about illegals being covered, when there is no language in any bill that checks for legal status before giving away health insurance or health care (this is what prompted that "that's a lie" outburst -- it was a lie, but our country doesn't have a system where back-benchers yell during speeches. Better if he had yelled "That's not true", it would have conveyed the same point and not had the "lie" word, which is unacceptable when used by Republicans but fine when Obama says it in his speech).

Obama said we needed to stop the scare tactics, and then said people would die if we didn't pass his health care plan. He said he was trying to be bi-partisan, when he has not invited Republican leaders to the White House since april, and Nancy Pelosi refused to let any Republican amendments come to the floor for a vote.

Here is just one of Obama's outrageous lies, where he claims a man died because his insurance cut off his chemo treatment:

One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn't reported gallstones that he didn't even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it.

Here, in contrast, is the sworn testimony of the man (Otto Radditz) sister, at a hearing in August:

After two appeals by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, Fortis Insurance Company finally overturned their original decision to rescind my brother’s coverage and he was reinstated without lapse. This is after weeks of constant phone calls between myself and the Attorney General’s Office and we were literally scrambling hour by hour to get this accomplished so that my brother wouldn’t lose his 3- to 4-week window of opportunity that he had prepared for and lose his opportunity to have the procedure.

There was no delay, he got the treatment, it just did not work. (Also, it wasn't Chemotherapy, it was a stem cell transplant, one of those non-embryonic ones that are already being used to save lives but are given the boot by the Obama administration so they push untested embryonic research).

But worst of all, he tried ot sell government interference in our health care as some sort of moral imperative, something we owed to our people. He tried to justify it by basically saying the American Ideals of self-reliance were outdated:

Our ability to stand in other people's shoes. A recognition that we are all in this together; that when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand. A belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgement that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.

Note how he deftly twists the human imperative to care for one another, into the opposite -- a greedy desire to force others to pay taxes to care for others, using government, so that we the people don't have to be bothered by it.

That is the liberal mantra -- why help someone myself, when I can get the government to take my neighbor's money ot do it, while I get credit for being "compassionate" and my neighbor can be ridiculed for being "cold-hearted"?

Note also the communist belief expressed in the phrase "hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play" -- that is simply a translation of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs".

It was never Government's job to "reward" people with personal security from hardship simply because they were "hard-working" or "responsible" (Forget the more obvious fact that millions of the people who are already given free medical care, or will be by this government takeover of health care are neither hard-working nor "responsible"). The hard work is what rewards you, with money, and the responsibility rewards you when you spend the money on important things like your health care.

At it's core, government-forced health insurance is proposed because people are supposedly IRRESPONSIBLE. We are too stupid to buy insurance, so the government will make us do it for our own good.

The idea that government knows best is NOT an American idea.

Why does anybody still read the lying New York Times?

2009-09-07T19:36:00.002-04:00

The New York Times has long been the whipping-boy of conservatives, because it regularly lies about what conservatives and liberals are saying, in the first case to make them look bad, in the second to hide how bad they are.

In the latest New York Times serial lying, the Times accused conservative Mark Steyn of comparing Obama to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il. Because the New York Times doesn't deserve a link, being almost as bad as a liberal blog, I'll quote from Mark Steyn's article about the "Omnipresent Leader":

As Times reporters James C. McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon wrote: “Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.”

Well, that must be true then. After all, the Rush Limbaugh show is broadcast nationally. People tape it, and transcribe it. So if the New York Times is willing to make a direct charge about what Mark Steyn said on the show, they certainly couldn't get it wrong, right?

Really. I have long defended newspapers for being the last bastion of truth. Sure, they bias the news, but when they say something happened, it probably happened. They check, and recheck, and they have editors to double-check.

But, well, this is the New York Times. Two reporters, an editor, and a publisher, along with who knows how many fact-checkers, all could have spent a minute checking the audio. Of course, if this was a left-wing national talk show host, they wouldn't have to -- because I bet the left-wing talk show is played in the offices every day, so they are all familiar with what is being said.

Anyway, here is what Mark Steyn ACTUALLY SAID:

“Obviously we’re not talking about the cult of personality on the Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale.”

That's right. Mark Steyn said that you could NOT COMPARE Obama's cult of personality with that of Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-Il.

The funny thing is, once the New York Times told all the other liberal newspapers what Mark said, they all repeated it in their articles. Even foreign papers were talking about how the evil conservative Steyn compared Obama to Hussein.

We just spent a week with daily revelations about a Czar in the white house saying and doing stupid things, things that were so bad that Van Jones had to quit his position. And during that week, the New York Times never bothered to tell their readers what was up.

But they had time to write about Mark Steyn -- oh, except they didn't have time to actually check their story.

Newspapers who trusted the New York Times to tell them the truth should be ashamed. People who by the New York Times should be shocked. The New York Times deserves to be going bankrupt.

More Frightening than an Obama Administration?

2009-09-04T22:54:00.002-04:00

Well, maybe not, but King Dominion's Halloween Haunt website is now up:

One of these years, I'm going to try to get a job as a monster.

Harry Reid - Senate better off with Kennedy Dead.

2009-09-01T23:40:00.003-04:00

I can't imagine the outrage if an elected Republican tried to say that Kennedy's death was a good thing.

But the mainstream media completely ignores it when Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid makes the argument, as found in the Reno Gazette-Journal:

Q: How will U.S. Sen. (Edward) Kennedy's death affect things?

A: I think it's going to help us. He hasn't been around for some time. We're going to have a new chairman of that committee, it'll be, I don't know for sure, but I think Sen. (Chris) Dodd, (D-Conn.). He has a right to take it. Either him or (U.S. Sen. Tom) Harkin, (D-Iowa), whichever one wants it can have it.

Yes, Reid just said that Kennedy was dead weight in the Senate, and now that he's dead they can get a chairman who will actually be there and get work done.

So, is Reid right? Would the democrats had been better off if Kennedy had resigned last year, allowing them to have a functioning senator now when they need the vote? Is Reid right when he suggests that Kennedy was selfish to hang around even after he couldn't show up and vote?

On the other hand, couldn't Reid have just replaced Kennedy as a chair, if he really thought Kennedy wasn't pulling his weight? What kind of leader lets his whole team suffer when he obviously thinks that one of his captains is letting the side down?

Or was Reid scared to act while Kennedy was alive? He obviously feels no problem speaking ill of the dead.

Deeds Visits Prince William

2009-08-31T01:02:00.002-04:00

Creigh Deeds, who seems to still be stuck in "me-too" mode in his campaign, followed Bob McDonnell into eastern Prince William County today, to open a field office in Ridgewood, where Obama had his office last year I think.

McDonnell was in town to meet with "Tito the Builder", and talk about support among hispanic voters. Even the Media General coverage noted how Deeds seemed to be mimicking the McDonnell campaign:

Munoz, though, while firmly backing McDonnell, said the needs of Hispanic voters are no different than those of other Virginians.

“We share the same values as any other American,” he said.

Ironically, his words were remarkably similar to what Deeds said when asked about what he could do for Virginia’s Hispanic voters, many of whom live in Prince William.

Deeds went on to sound his major campaign theme, which is that he has no plans for anything:

But that doesn’t mean his campaign has formulated policies for individual ethnic groups, he said.
“I’m focused on creating economic hope and opportunity in every part of the state for every single Virginian,” Deeds said.

I don't think anybody ever thought the Deed's campaign had formulated any policies, for individual groups or for the state. That's why most of the time Deeds seems to be running around repeating whatever McDonnell says.

Why should I care what AAA does?

2009-08-04T10:41:00.003-04:00

The AFA sent out an alert complaining about AAA giving "family" memberships to homosexual couples:

During a face-to-face meeting yesterday between Equality Florida and AAA South, top management at the 4th largest AAA affiliate in the country committed to recognizing all spouses, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. The policy allows gay married couples to receive spousal discounts under AAA's Associate Membership program.

First of all, this is not the "AAA"; it is one part of AAA. AAA is a private entity, and they have decided to grant family memberships to couples that are gay.

This is not the same as a company spending money pushing a homoesexual agenda. This isn't even a company trying to force gay marriage on the country. It's just a company trying to make money by getting people who live together to pay more money for a family membership.

A lot of companies grant family memberships without regard to marriage; their goal is to get more members and money, not make judgments one whether people are legally married or not.

So long as a company isn't using profits from my business to actively promote gay marriage, I don't have a problem with them. People in this country have the right to enter into voluntary associations, and companies have a right to recognize those associations as they see fit.

I don't want the government to use my tax dollars to reward homosexual marriages, because such marriages are not beneficial to society. I don't want government to force churches to recognize marriage, or to force children to learn about and welcome gay sexual activity as normal.

And if people want to stop using AAA because of their policies, that's fine with me -- it's a free country. And I want to keep it a free country, something that is increasingly hard with Obama and the Democrats in charge, taking over companies and dictating to the rest of us how we have to live our lives. Soon we won't be able to buy incandescent bulbs; we won't have the choice of cars we want, we'll be paying taxes if our health care is too good, we'll be forced into health insurance whether we want it or not, we'll be forced to buy insurance that covers things we don't want or need coverage for.

So pardon me if I don't get worked up over AAA giving family discounts to gay couples.

Black President Opposed by Citil Rights Organization?

2009-08-04T08:11:00.003-04:00

One thing you would have expected from America's First Black President was a strong support for civil rights. After years of contention between civil rights leaders and George Bush, you would expect smooth sailing for a Democratic administration led by an African-American, especially with a justice department headed up by another first African-American.

But in the six short months that Obama has been destroying the country we know, he has shown that the old expectations simply do not apply to the man who is now President, especially when it comes to treatment of people without regards to who they are or which candidate they supported in the election. This administration has made it their mission to use the entire force of government, and both our tax dollars and the tax dollars of our children and grandchildren, to reward those who support them, and to pay off those who worked for them or support their causes.

So I guess it shouldn't be surprising that this administration has run afoul of the U.S. Civil Rights commission, over of all things the clearest case of voter discrimination from the past year. From the Washington Times, "Panel Blasts Panther Case Dismissal":

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is demanding that the Justice Department explain why it recently dismissed a civil complaint against members of the New Black Panther Party who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place during last year's election, saying the department has offered only "weak justifications."
...
In January, the Justice Department filed a civil complaint in Philadelphia against the New Black Panther Party after two of its members in black berets, black combat boots, black shirts and black jackets purportedly intimidated voters with racial insults, slurs and a nightstick. A third party member was accused of managing, directing and endorsing their behavior. The incident was captured on videotape.

Here is that videotape:

The government had already won the lawsuit against the Black Panthers; so why did Eric Holder's justice department decide to drop the charges?

The Black Panthers were doing the bidding of the Democratic party, that's why. They were keeping whites from voting against Obama.

We had a local complaint about voter intimidation last year, because the Help Save Manassas members showed up at a polling place with a sign reminding people they had to be citizens to vote, and a camera recording them. This was considered "vote suppression" by some because illegal immigrants would be worried about getting deported, even though illegals aren't supposed to vote.

Well, imagine if Greg Lettiecq had been standing at an hispanic polling place with a baseball bat. You can be sure there'd be a prosecution for voter intimidation. But in the Obama administration, it's not about what you do, it's about who you know, and how much money you gave to support Obama. Sotomeyer will soon be a Supreme court justice who thinks that you should be judged on the color of your skin rather than what the law says. People get stimulus dollars based on their support for democrats.

Obama, Democrats plan to destroy private health care

2009-08-03T20:41:00.002-04:00

Despite claims to the contrary, there can be little doubt that Obama and the Democrats seek to destroy private health care in this country. Pelosi and the Democrat's summer attacks on the "evil Health Insurance Industry" is just one clear sign that they mean to eliminate all private health insurance, forcing people to accept government-run health care. After all, why would they pass a plan supporting private health insurers if they think those insurers are evil?

Then there are "slips", like Charles Rangel noting that the current plan is just an incremental step on the way to universal public health care.

The latest indication though, is a comment made by one of the Democrat's closest allies, Planned Parenthood. The Political reports that, speaking about how important it was for the public health care option to cover abortions, Laurie Rubiner, vice president for public policy and advocacy at Planned Parenthood, lets the cat out of the bag once again:

On “Fox News Sunday” this past weekend, budget director Peter Orszag said he is “not prepared to rule ... out” taxpayer financing for abortions.

Planned Parenthood’s Rubiner said the alternative would be slashing benefits for millions of women who currently have coverage for abortions and cited polling suggesting such services have popular support.

The anti-abortion activists’ demand “violates the first principle of health care reform, which is: Don’t make people worse off under health care reform than they are today,” she said.

Why would limiting abortion in the public option "slash benefits" for anybody who have coverage now under private plans?

Only if those private plans are going away.

Which is obviously what the liberal expect. It's the only way that Rubiner's statement makes any sense.

The Obama administration, with Pelosi, Reid, and the Democratic majority, plan on replacing people's private coverage with the public option. So if the public option doesn't cover abortions, millions of women WILL lose abortion coverage, when the Democrats wipe out their private health insurance benefits.

Thank you, Planned Parenthood, for providing more evidence for the real plans of this administration. When Obama promises you can keep your insurance, just remember: Your insurance company is evil, Obama will tax your plan, your company will want to push you into the public option, and Planned Parenthood expects millions of women to lose their private coverage.

And note: not one major news organization has asked WHY Planned Parenthood thinks women will lose their private insurance -- because they all know that is the plan under Obama.

I'm not dead, just resting

2009-07-30T00:03:00.002-04:00

One of my favorite lines from Monty Python "It's not dead, it's just resting"

Anyway, we're still here, just "resting". OK, I did get tired of all the fighting and bickering, about the incompetence and impotence of the GOP, and the general tone of politicial discourse.

So I've been busy with other things. I worked on losing enough weight to clear the Boy Scout maximum weight limits before I went to summer camp. I had a business trip. I spent a lot of time on the train show, and my wife and daughter took a trip to Costa Rica.

I have to get back into blogging. I like writing for the paper, but the restriction to write only about local things drives me nuts.

Frankly, what is happening nationally is the most critical local issue we have.

What we need to do here in Virginia is to consider passing a law preventing the federal government from taking over our lives. If our representatives in the house and senate won't protect our liberties, our state government needs to take action to prevent the feds from ruining our state as they ruin the country.

The government has no business messing around with my health care, or anybody else's health care. If you need a doctor, go see a doctor. If the doctor wants money, pay them. If you are smart, you will buy insurance so if you have a major illness, you can get treatment, just like you insure your car and house. But if you have a cold, pay for it. If you need a drug, pay for it. Or get a job that gives you comprehensive insurance, or buy comprehensive insurance and cancel the cable -- that will benefit you in TWO ways.

But don't tell me that I have to change how I use MY money to provide for my family, just because some other people think it costs too much for them to take care of themselves. I don't have to buy "food insurance" to guarantee I can eat dinner, why should I have to buy health insurance?

Nothing, NOTHING in the constitution gives the government the right to interfere with people's health care. It's not commerce, it's not security, it's simply government meddling.

Cap and trade is STUPID because they are solving a problem that doesn't exist, with programs that will kill the economy without making a difference. But at least the problem they THINK they are solving is one that makes sense for government to solve, since the government IS responsible for keeping the commons available for the masses.

But not so with Health Care, or with their interference in private business like taking over the auto industry, or taking billions of our tax dollars to pay off their union buddies who elected them.

Fortunately, America is waking from it's slumber. Unfortunately, those in power could care less what is good for America, OR what Americans say they want. They have a plan to remake our country in their marxist image, and they seem hell-bent on implementing it.

Hopefully, we will elect some conservatives this fall, so that Virginia can be a beacon of hope for our nation, as it was in the beginning. Virginia has the chance to lead our country out of darkness, if we can get out of the darkness ourselves first. 7.3 percent unemployment -- I never thought I'd see that here in Virginia, even with Democrats in charge. We used to elect better Democrats I guess.

And of course, the real unemployment is much worse; Northern Virginia is pretty much driving that number down because of all the government make-work jobs Obama is pushing for his public union buddies.

Democrats Pass Bill they didn't write.

2009-06-29T03:04:00.002-04:00

Obama won election by promising an end to the absurd practice of the Democrats to pass bills that nobody had a chance to read.

Well, as rediculous as that is, the Democrats have found a way to make things even worse.

It turns out that on Friday, they passed a bill that they hadn't even bothered to WRITE.

Story by Powerline: (quoting the Examiner):

Through a series of parliamentary inquiries, the Republicans learned that the 300-plus page managers' amendment, added to the bill last night in the House Rules Committee, has not even been been integrated with the official copy of the 1,090-page bill at the House Clerk's desk, let alone in any other location. The two documents are side-by-side at the desk as the clerk reads through the instructions in the 300 page document for altering the 1,090 page document.

So nobody could read the final bill, because nobody has written the final bill yet. As the Republicans sarcastically ask:

"If a bill for which there is no copy were to actually pass this body," Barton asked, "could the bill without a copy be sent to the Senate for its consideration?"

The House was in such a rush to pass this, they couldn't be bothered to read or write it. But there was no need for a rush, as this bill won't be considered by the Senate until September. The only reason they rushed it is because they would lose votes every day they waited, especially if they ever wrote the bill so people could see what is in it.

Poster Explains Obama's Health Care Plan

2009-06-25T09:04:00.002-04:00

Obama Discusses Death Bed Treatment

Obama said families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

So if your parent gets sick, and the treatment has a 70% success rate, say goodbye, because the treatment won't "necessarily" improve care.

And note that it is "improve care", not "improve your life". If the treatment will be successful, but leave you taking medication the rest of your life, that will drive up the cost of care, and won't "improve care", so you might as well just go off and die.

Obama, who is a multi-millionare and raised 700 MILLION dollars for his campaign, left his grandmother who raised him confined to a wheelchair, and hardly visited her, when doctors told her she could die in 9 months and she needed hip replacement surgery:

She fell and broke her hip, "and the question was, does she get hip replacement surgery, even though she was fragile enough they were not sure how long she would last?"

Actually, He never said whether she got the surgery, but the story makes no sense if he gave her the surgery. But who cares if a millionare spends their own money to make their own parent's end-of-life experience better? How does Obama paying for his granmother's surgery drive up MY health care costs?

The only reason this makes any sense is if you assume that we all have to pay for everybody else's care. If you don't, you have no reason to tell other people what kind of care they can get with their own money.

But Obama wants to take over health care, because he says the problem with rising costs is ingrained in the system. It is -- we want better treatment, we want to live longer, and every new procedure, new drug, new discovery costs us more, but gains us more as well.

The solution to rising costs due to better care, is to stop giving better care. An analogy -- a new owner of a baseball team can cut costs by hiring less-capable athletes. But then the team doesn't do as well. Obama says we spend too much money keeping old people alive, and he wants to stop it -- by forcing everybody into a public health plan that won't ALLOW anybody to do so (except I'm sure congressmen and rich democrat donors, who will be exempted).

Because, after all, if the federal government can't afford to give expensive treatment to a poor unemployed welfare recipient, Bill Gates shouldn't be allowed to get that treatment either -- it wouldn't be "fair".

If your parents are putting off any treatments, better rush them in now -- Obama is looking for some clean white pillows for them.

Obama Strongly Opposes Obama's "Health Care" plan

2009-06-16T10:42:00.002-04:00

Obama, in a scathing speech last October, ripped apart President Obama's proposed funding schemes for his ill-considered health care plan:

“[President Obama] and I have real differences on this issue. [President Obama]'s been eager to share some of the details of his health care plan, but not all of them. It's like those ads for prescription drugs. You know, they start off, everybody's running in the fields and everybody's happy and then there's the little fine print that says, you know, side effects may include.

Now, first of all, we found out that [President Obama] wants to pay for his plan by taxing your health care benefits for the first time in history. Just like George Bush. That was bad enough.

But ‘The Wall Street Journal’ recently reported that it was actually worse than we thought. It turns out [President Obama] would pay for part of his plan by making drastic cuts in Medicare. $882 billion worth. $882 billion in Medicare cuts to pay for an ill-conceived, badly thought through health care plan that won't provide more health care to people. Even though Medicare's already facing a looming shortfall.

...

So what would [President Obama]'s cuts mean for Medicare at a time when more and more Americans are relying on it? It would mean a cut of more than 20 percent in Medicare benefits next year. If you count on Medicare, it would mean fewer places to get care and less freedom to choose your own doctors. You'll pay more for your drugs. You'll receive fewer services. You'll get lower quality care.

I don't think that's right. In fact, it ain't right.” (Senator Barack Obama, Remarks, Roanoke, VA, 10/17/08)

As much as I disliked Senator Obama, the Presidential Candidate, he was still better than President Obama, left-wing Lackey.

(note: In the original text, the name was not "President Obama", but rather "Senator McCain". Also, while here Obama decries 882 billion in medicare cuts, President Obama has actually proposed more than 900 billion in cuts now that he is President.)

Post Continues to shill for Democrats

2009-06-14T07:43:00.002-04:00

Even when they are trying to report something negative, the Washington Post does it's best to make people feel good about Obama and the Democrats. The front page is not a place to do political endorsements, but the Post joins it's big brother the New York Times in doing it's best to minimize the damage.

In today's article, "Obama's Spending Plans May Pose Political Risks", the shilling starts in the headline. Note the "May" along with "Political Risks". In fact, his spending plans DO pose serious risks to our economy and the livelyhoods of the American people, along with the savings of our elderly retired citizens. By suggesting this is merely a political problem, and that is is only a possibility, the Post suggests that, whatever the risks, they are not reasonable.

And lest even this mild headline throw off their readers, the Post starts this analysis of the shortfalls of spending trillions we don't have by lying about Obama's meager record of the first five months:

After enjoying months of towering poll numbers, legislative victories and well-received foreign policy initiatives, the White House has become increasingly concerned that President Obama's spending plans, which would require $9 trillion in government borrowing over the next decade, could become a political liability that defines the 2010 midterm elections.

Let's start with the closest to the truth, the "towering poll numbers". First, some history: Bush's March 2001 poll numbers:

Two months after becoming the 43rd President, George W. Bush is riding high in the polls. His job-approval rating hovers near 60%, and some two-thirds of Americans like him personally. His Cabinet gets very high marks. A large majority favors his tax cut.

In fact, Gallop had Bush at 69%, while Obama's march numbers from Rasmussen were only 56%. Heck, Bush Sr. had higher poll numbers in march:

George W. Bush 69%
George H.W. Bush 63 %
Barack Hussein Obama 56 % !!!!

Of course, CNN polling has shown that 110% of real Americans love Barack Obama.

How about those months of "legislative victories"? Well, certainly the Democrats, being in charge of the house, senate, and the executive branches, and having a decade worth of plans to implement, should have a bevy of bills passed, right? But so far Obama has failed to pass Card Check, the congress defeated his request for money to close Guantanamo, he has no support for his plan to put terrorists in our country, and even on the Stimulus package, he failed to get what he wanted, instead having to bow to an even worse plan by democrats in the house.

He did manage to pass SCHIP, which had already passed several times, and would have been law if the democrats hadn't insisted on covering the world with the child medical plan.

Of course, by "victory" they must have simply meant "passed", because by any measure the OBama "stimulus" package is a dismal failure. They rushed a bill of 900 billion dollars saying the money was needed. But so far only about 20 billion has been spent, unemployment is ABOVE where it was projected to be at the end of the year WITHOUT a stimulus, and the weakening of the Dollar due to the overspending has helped drive Oil and gas prices up again.

Meanwhile, his attempts to save two car companies failed, leaving him a socialized takeover of GM and Chrysler, no doubt driving unemployment even higher.

On bill after bill, Obama has provided only the vaguest of hints as to what he wants, because when he makes it clear, the house and senate democrats ignore him and pass what they want anyway. Easier to claim "victory" when you claim whatever comes out as your own.

And don't forget that while Obama promised to allow the American people to see each piece of legislature for 5 days before signing them, he has yet to allow us to see ANY bill he has signed for that long. So he can't even implement policies that he has complete control over.

But the most laughable is the 'Well-received foreign policy initiatives". In his brief time trying to learn how to be President, he has become the laughingstock of the world. He slighted our closest ally, England, multiple times, mistreating Brown, and more recently with the Uigher fiasco in Bermuda -- a country who Obama has now managed to seriously destabilize, along with Palau.

Iran just re-elected their anti-American leader. Obama refused to eat with Sarkozy claiming he had more important things to do, and then Obama came home and played golf. He has seriously undermined our solid relationship with a close ally and democratic country Israel, while his kissing up to anti-democratic muslim governments and extremists has earned the US no benefit.

North Korea is blatantly testing nuclear weapons, and has announced the will enrich uranium, and Obama has no answer. While Europe is electing new leadership that sees the danger of muslim radicals taking over their countries, Obama is lying about the number of muslims in our country, and trying to sell the fiction that we used to be the enemies of the Muslim world. This after we sent our troops to die defending muslims in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Kosovo, Albania, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and have been close allies with Pakistan and and other muslim countries.

No, in the short time Obama has been in office, our nation's debt has skyrocketed, the respect we had in the world (not the kissy-faced platitudes, but the actual respect that kept our enemies at bay and our friends close beside us) has been destroyed, muslim extremists are launching terror attacks on our own soil again, the world is increasingly dismissing our currency, oil and gas prices are skyrocketing, and our businesses are being undermined by Obama's ill-considered belief that the government can run things better than we can.

Obama has no answers, other than to continue to blame the previous administration for actions the democrats took over the past two years when they controlled congress. The Washington Post helps out:

"The reckless fiscal policies of the past have left us in a very deep hole," Obama said last week. "And digging our way out of it will take time, patience and some tough choices."

But in fact, for the spending of the last two years, except for the war in Iraq, Obama voted FOR all the spending. He pushed for and claimed credit for the TARP bill. He joined his fellow democrats blocking the fixes to the mortgage industry that might have staved off the worst of the downturn. Obama cannot blame others for the economy, which was fine before his party took over the Senate in 2007 and drove gas and oil prices to record highs.

Note that the oil and gas prices only dropped when the democrats, trying to win re-election, allowed bans on drilling to expire. Then, when he took office, Obama blocked exploration of offshore oil, and announced plans to ban more drilling, and oil and gas prices shot back up.

Obama doesn't get it though, as seen by his "plan" to fix the deficit:

Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, said that a quick economic recovery would have the single biggest effect on the grim budget forecasts and that the administration's top priority will be "getting America's fiscal house in order" once Congress finishes work on health-care and energy reform legislation.

"energy reform" is their name for cap-and-trade, which will kill our economy and run up the deficits more. health-care as perceived by Obama means trillions more in government spending. So in addition to the record deficits Obama has charged up this year and last year as a Senator, he plans on trillions more, before he gets our "house in order".

A quick economic recovery would have been the best. The TARP passed last year didn't help, although it might have worked if it was smaller and more targeted to what it was supposed to be, buying off toxic assets to free up capital. The failure of the democrats to pass a good TARP bill (and many republicans went along with that fiasco) hurt our economic recovery. But Obama's "stimulus" package sunk our recovery, directing money we didn't have NOT to stimulate, but to pay off his political supporters. They gave him 700 million dollars to win the election, and he returned the favor with 700 billion in money paid out to unions, colleges, ACORN, and liberal groups throughout the country.

Democrat Senator Leahy questions Sotomayor's impartiality.

2009-06-11T21:44:00.003-04:00

In 1990, faced with confirming conservative judges appointed by the Bush administration, the Democrats on the judiciary committee decided to implement a rule regarding the membership in exclusive, discriminatory clubs.

From the Washington Times:

In June 1990, Arlen Specter, then a Republican from Pennsylvania, and all but one of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary committee sponsored a resolution warning nominees that having belonged to such clubs could be enough to deny them confirmation. The resolution claimed that membership in such organizations "conflicts with the impartiality, and the appearance of impartiality" expected of judges and that it will be held against the nominee unless they "actively engaged" in efforts to get underrepresented groups into the organizations.

Sens. Leahy, Specter and Herb Kohl, Wisconsin Democrat, supported the resolution and are still on the Judiciary Committee. Joseph Biden, who was the committee chairman at the time, is now vice president.

Well, it turns out that Judge Sotomayor is a current member of a discriminatory, exclusive organization:

It was revealed Friday that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor belongs to the Belizean Grove, a highly selective club for women only.

The Democrats applied this rule against nominees if they had EVER, no matter how far in their past, been members of such an organization, even if they had quit, and even if they had denounced the group.

In 2001, they held up one nominee for over a year for belonging to a fishing club:

When Judge D. Brooks Smith was nominated to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 2001, his confirmation was held up for almost a year in part because he belonged to an all-male fishing and gun club.

But Sotomayor has never denounced this group. In fact, she JOINED the group well after being confirmed as a judge, just last year in fact (from the Politico):

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor last year accepted an invitation to join the Belizean Grove, an elite but little-known women’s-only group.
...
Sotomayor’s membership in the New York-based group became public Thursday afternoon in a questionnaire submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Of course, because she is a Democrat, and they are Democrats, Leahy and Kohl will ignore the rules and vote to confirm her anyway. Democrats in general are very bad when it comes to consistancy, prefering hypocrisy.

But in fact, Sotomayor has violated more than a longstanding Democrat-sponsored judiciary rule. She has violated the ethics standards for Judges:

The American Bar Association's Canons of Judicial Ethics stipulates that judges "shall not" be members of any organization that unfairly discriminates based on gender.

So Sotomayor, having a lifetime judicial appointment to the appeals court, knowingly defied the ABA canon of Judicial Ethics, casting doubt on all her rulings by joining a discriminatory exclusive club. She should be censured, not given a promotion.

Her membership in a club that excludes men from it's membership casts a new and disturbing light on her previous comments that a "wise latina woman" would make better decisions than a "white man". She can no longer pretend she treats genders equally, now that we know of her bigoted membership in this club.

IN many ways, this is much worse than her membership in the racist organization "La Raza". We already know she is biased for people of her own ethnic background -- I have no doubt that a white man won't get justice from her against hispanics. So it isn't really a surprise that she belongs to a bigoted racist organization like "La Raza", (whose name says it all).

Sotomayor: conflict of interest in Ricci Case?

2009-06-11T21:33:00.003-04:00

A recent revelation of a legal seminar in which Judge Sotomayor participated in the 1990s reveals a conflict of interest which should have caused her to recuse herself from the Ricci firefighter case.

That she did not do so raises new questions about her ethics.

According to CNN:

The female panel members politely objected to her characterizations of how she overcame such obstacles, pointing out she graduated from law school with honors and was on the prestigious law review. Sotomayor countered that those were signs test scores alone do not offer the full measure of a person's capability. Test scores, she said, often can be the result of "cultural biases."

The question in the Ricci case was whether test scores are the result of "cultural bias" and therefore could be thrown out. Sotomayor already had an opinion on the merits of the case, and made a flippant ruling which simply reflected her biased and preconcieved notions.

It is no wonder that she didn't really look into the facts of the case, as she already "knew" from her "life experiences" that the Firefighters were wrong and the city was correct.

This isn't the only unethical thing about Sotomayor that is being ignored by the media.

Study: Children raised by Gays 7 times more likely to be Gay

2009-06-09T23:45:00.002-04:00

A doctor doing analysis of studies performed in the last decade of children raised in homosexual households discovers a "hidden" statistic supporting an obvious observation: such children are much more likely to have homosexual encounters than the general population.

Dr. Trayce Hansen, Phd, makes this discovery public in a recent column "Pro-Homosexual Researchers Conceal Findings: Children Raised by Openly Homosexual Parents More Likely to Engage in Homosexuality":

Research by social scientists, although not definitive, suggests that children reared by openly homosexual parents are far more likely to engage in homosexual behavior than children raised by others. Studies thus far find between 8% and 21% of homosexually parented children ultimately identify as non-heterosexual. For comparison purposes, approximately 2% of the general population are non-heterosexual. Therefore, if these percentages continue to hold true, children of homosexuals have a 4 to 10 times greater likelihood of developing a non-heterosexual preference than other children.

Dr. Hansen goes on to point out ways that the various researchers tried to bury this information, since it goes against the public message that homosexual couples are just as good for children as biological families, and that homosexuality is a genetic predisposition, not something that could be induced by environment.

But if true, this analysis of studies would blow a hole in that theory, showing instead that encouraging homosexual acceptance will in fact encourage homosexual behavior among children who would otherwise live an exclusive heterosexual lifestyle.

Along with other recent studies showing that any genetic component of homosexuality can only account for about 10 percent of homosexuality, it is now becoming clear that Americans have been sold a bill of goods by the homosexual lobby in their push to justify and "normalize" nontraditional, nonreproductive sexual activities.

Regardless, no one should be surprised that homosexual parents are more likely to raise homosexual children. As one of the few forthright pro-homosexual advocates proclaimed, "Of course our children are going to be different."

You would expect that children raised in a homosexual household would be more accepting of homosexual activity, since they would naturally want to believe their parents are normal and acceptable.

And in fact, the insistance that being gay was something you were born with and couldn't be taught was so ingrained that most people arguing against gay couples adopting children focused on the serious deficiency of children raised with only one gender of parent.

Findings from the best and most recent twin studies have found that homosexuality, unlike eye color, is not genetically-caused. But there are a number of non-genetic mechanisms through which homosexuality could be transmitted from one generation to the next. Those mechanisms include role-modeling, social learning and differential reinforcement, as well as outright encouragement of non-heterosexuality by parents or others.

It is one thing to argue that two consenting adults, who desire to have a non-traditional relationship, should have the right to do so without interference by the government. It is another to argue that gay couples have a natural right to impose their sexual preference on children through the act of adoption.

Obama: too busy for his job

2009-06-09T23:28:00.002-04:00

Obama, asked why he refused to eat with French President Sarkozy (who is, shockingly, more conservative than our current President), laughingly said:

“I have a very tough schedule and I would love nothing more than to have a leisurely week in Paris, stroll down the Seine, take my wife out to a nice meal, have a picnic in Luxembourg Gardens,” Obama said, pointing out that he was caught up in dealing with the pressing financial crisis at home.

Of course, last week his "tough schedule" didn't preclude him from taking a day off to spend tens of thousands of our tax dollars to take his wife to a broadway play in New York, inconveniencing thousands of New Yorkers in the process, all of whom probably had tough schedules of their own that were ruined by the President.

Not that Obama really understands schedules, as he is late for everything.

But he had to rush home to do his job, after all. Except within 90 minutes of arriving back at the White House, he was rushing off to his next pressing financial engagement -- a leisurely round of golf.

Of course, it would have been fun to watch Obama walk on water, so I wish he had taken the time to "walk down the Seine".

Is Obama using Control of Chrysler to pay off political donors?

2009-05-27T01:33:00.002-04:00

The internet has been buzzing with the discovery that many of the Chrysler dealerships that were shut down were owned by Republican supporters who opposed Obama. However, this didn't seem like a solid argument to me at the time. First, I presume that most entrepeneurs who have to work for a living would oppose Obama, so maybe most all of the dealerships are Republicans. Second, we were told that the list of closures was generated by Chrysler, so there was no chance for Obama to interfere.

However, tonight Gateway Pundit is reporting new information that blows a hole in that theory, and strongly suggests that Obama is in fact using the power of the presidency, and the control he has over the car companies because of OUR TAX DOLLARS, to reward democratic donors and Obama supporters while driving better dealerships run by Republicans out of business.

From the Gateway Pundit:

Now there's this...RLJ-McLarty-Landers is owned by three men.One was the former Chief of Staff for President Clinton.One is the founder of Black Entertainment Television and a huge Obama supporter.All 6 of their Chrysler dealerships will remain open.And, get this... Their local competitors have been eliminated!
...
More... The decision to close the dealerships was made by Obama officials and not Chrysler.

I dislike major stories reported from blogs. It is a shame that the major media outlets refuse to even investigate this story, as it could be a bigger scandal than Watergate, a greater abuse of presidential power than the teapot dome scandal.

Terry McCauliffe -- Bad for Virginia

2009-05-18T22:28:00.002-04:00

OK, so it's not my party's primary. And it would be fun to attack McCauliffe in the general election with his record.

But what lesson have we learned from the 2008 elections? Once the Democrats pick their candidate, it won't matter even if we catch him with a dead girl AND a live boy in his bed, the Democrats will vote Democrat, and some independents will totter along if the candidate has enough money to sway them.

And McCauliffe has tons of money, which according to the Washington Post, he earned in the way that Obama says is evil.

The Post in fact deflates the bubble that is McCauliffe's ego, showing that his claims of creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and launching dozens of companies, ALL SUCCESSFUL, is just one more of Terri McCauliffe's lies:

Yet McAuliffe's business pedigree is not so simple. He is a dealmaker who made millions from investments. And many of his biggest deals came in partnership with prominent donors and politicians, creating a portrait over the years of a Washington insider who got rich as he rose to power within the Democratic Party.
...
But they belie the complexity of a business career built mostly on intricate land deals and dot-com investments, often with wealthy political donors -- and sometimes with no jobs to show for it.

The Post details deal after deal which were little more than Terri paying off political allies in exchange to access. And it mentions a case where Terri seems to have taken advantage of the unions:

The pension fund put up virtually all the money -- about $40 million compared with McAuliffe's $100 -- even though McAuliffe would own a 50 percent share in the partnership. This detail would become a point of contention in a lawsuit filed against the fund trustees by the Department of Labor, which regulates the management of pension funds and which determined that it had not been a good investment for the electrical workers. In 2001, after two years of litigation, the trustees, including Moore, settled in U.S. District Court.

Terri had 5 companies in Virginia which he touts, but none had any employees:

And at a candidates' forum in December, in response to Moran's claim to be the only candidate who had run a business and raised a family in Virginia, McAuliffe boasted of launching five businesses in Virginia. It turned out that all five are investment partnerships, with no employees, registered to his home address in McLean.

At least he didn't try to claim a grass-cutting business. But he sure likes to "exaggerate", which is the Democrat's euphamism for "lie":

McAuliffe's tendency to exaggerate his successes adds to that perception. Describing the apartments he purchased with the union fund, McAuliffe said he "went through every apartment myself, like 1,600 of them, to make sure the toilets worked" -- but then added: "Well, I didn't go through 1,600. But I went through every property exhaustively. Sure I did! I owned them!" McAuliffe then claimed that his home-building company built 1,300 homes at its peak, but an adviser later clarified that the figure was closer to 800.

The post story is a must-read, which is something I very rarely say.

Train Show

2009-05-18T03:33:00.002-04:00

One reason for light blogging is that I am lazy.

Another is that I am working on an exhibit for the 15th annual Manassas Railway Festival, to be held June 6, 2009 at the Manassas Rail Station.

I did this back in 2006, when I had my back problems. This year has been a lot easier, since I am not in constant pain. Also, the tables were already built, and I still have most of my models.

So of course, I took the opportunity to make it bigger and badder. I've added a full 2nd level, with an extra wing, so instead of an "L" I now have a "U". I'm also working on intermediate levels, giving a more "3-dimensional" look.

So here's hoping for a sunny, cool day on June 6th. It should be a lot of fun. There will also be live music and games for the kids.

You know you want to have fun, and you know you can't afford to travel this year, so come on out and spend a day with your neighbors looking at trains. You can also see the big empty lot where they don't have an annoying sign.

Sad fact: when I did the last train show, I was right next to that property, and I have pictures of the house that used to be there before they burned it down and made it into a neighborhood eyesore.

Still here.

2009-05-18T03:11:00.003-04:00

I'm still around. Just don't have anything to say that isn't being said somewhere already. Anyway, in the era of Obama, it seems clear the best course of action is to hide under a rock.

You certainly don't want to say anything against what he's doing, because he seems quite willing to use the power of government against people who displease him. I figure if the guy can take over two car companies, what chance do I have?

It is interesting to note that a couple of months ago, we were all told how bad the economy would get by the end of the year if we didn't pass Obama's idea of a "stimulus package". But now that we DID pass Obama's bill, we've already reached all the milestones that were expected by the end of the year. Which would suggest that rather than "stimulating" the economy, Obama actually made it worse.

We have lost more jobs since Obama took office than he promised to "save or create". I once joked that when Obama promised to save 4 million jobs, that the other 100+ million jobholders better watch out. But we won't lose 100 million jobs, because Obama isn't going to cut any government positions. He'll probably hire people to help him run the car companies.

Gas prices dropped like a stone when we got rid of the stupid ban on offshore drilling. But now that Obama seems to be re-imposing the ban by dictatorial fiat, prices are shooting up again.

The problem with the Stimulus bill is that most of the money went to state and local governments. I was in Fair Oaks mall last saturday, and I looked all around, but I didn't see government shopping. If you give money to real people, they go spend it, which means businesses stay open and hire people who spend their earnings which means more business.

If you give money to the government, government doesn't go to the shopping mall, they generate new programs to waste the money where it will do no good. Oh, and they take forever to do no good, apparently after all the rush to enact the stimulus package, only about 15% of the money has been spent.

And when you are trying to figure out who to thank for the federal stimulus money we are getting, thank me. I'm a taxpayer, and it's my money they are giving out. And yours, if you are a taxpayer. Some people are thanking Connally, or Obama, or Webb/Warner. Sorry, they aren't giving you their money, they are giving you MY money. Might as well thank the robber who gives you money he just stole from the guy in the alley.

In 2007, Democrats promised change. Hope you are happy.

2009-03-08T00:47:00.002-04:00

I was cleaning out my e-mail, and stumbled across an article from mid-2007 written by Larry Kudlow. He was commenting on the new Democratic Majority's promise to change things. As he pointed out, at the time the market was at an all-time high, housing values were up 200%, unemployment was at near-historic lows, oil prices were dropping, and our deficit had been cut in half.

And he asked the obvious question -- what exactly where the Democrats going to change?

The answer is now clear. The question is why anybody who actually had any money saved would ever have voted for the Democrats or Obama -- and whether anybody who used to have money before the Democrats took over would make that mistake ever again.

Obama may be a good President for the unemployed and those who spent money they didn't have. Democrats are good at supporting their constituency, which apparently are a mix of people who don't invest, people who don't work, and people who have money but never had to work for it and have it protected. Oh, and I forgot tax cheats.

But, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, socialism is great for the have-nots, until they run out of "haves" to steal from. Which Obama is taking care of in record fashion. At some point, maybe Obama will realise that if the nation is bankrupt, the Russians and the Chinese and the Palistinians aren't going to come bail us out. And you can't give away health care if you don't have it to give. And, well, all of us really did want to retire some day, even if Obama is too young to give a damn.

Holder: Guantanamo's great, but we'll close it anyway.

2009-02-25T23:42:00.002-04:00

Leave it to the new Democratic administration to realise that Guantanamo bay is nothing like what they thought, but still stick to their stupid plan to close it.:

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday the Guantanamo detention center is a well-run, professional facility that will be difficult to close — but he's still going to do it. Holder visited the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Monday and spoke to reporters about his trip during a news conference Wednesday.

In what world does that make sense? The fantasy world of the Obama Administration. If a federal program has failed miserably, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he wants to spend billions more on it. But a "well-run, professional facility?" Shut it down, and use the money for programs that don't work.

Holder said his visit to the site was instructive. He met with military officials and toured the facilities, including the court setting where military commissions were to be held until Obama suspended them.

He said he did not witness any rough treatment of detainees, and in fact found the military staff and leadership performing admirably.

"I did not witness any mistreatment of prisoners. I think, to the contrary, what I saw was a very conscious attempt by these guards to conduct themselves in an appropriate way," he said.

The attorney general said none of those impressions alters the administration's goal of closing Guantanamo by January 2010.

My guess is that Guantanamo is run better than most of the in-state prison facilities where we will end up sticking these terrorists, until they get out on technicalities and launch new attacks on our country.

And when they do, Obama will no doubt blame Bush for "making them hate us". Obama would be a one-trick pony if he had any tricks at all.

Relative Lack of inexperience

2009-02-25T08:35:00.003-04:00

Obama is one of the least experienced presidents we have ever had. As my wife said after watching him a little last night "He was like the head Cheerleader", rather than a President.

The local paper thought the most important quote from Obama was "The time to secure our future is here". The only thing more trite would be if he said "The time to secure our future is now" -- which at least would have had the advantage of showing the President knows how to use English. Really: The time is HERE? And I guess he is now.

But Obama is trying to look more experienced by appointing inexperienced, unqualified people to his cabinet (in retrospect, Clinton as Secretary of State looks positively golden, and she had never held a single position working with foreign issues before her appointment).

But the Democrats in congress will cover for him. I loved this comment about Carl Levin from Defense Daily:

{Carl} Levin says he “can’t foresee” opposing nominee for top Pentagon procurement post, but adds it’s “perfectly legitimate” to question Carter’s lack of acquisition experience at upcoming confirmation hearing.

Thanks, Carl, for suggesting that it's OK to ask why the nominee has never done the job he is being nominated for. Was there NO person in the aquisition department that was ready to take over the top job?

For Commerse, we now has former Governor Locke, who apparently has no commerce experience, but is another lobbyist. Remember when Obama was opposed to lobbyists, back when he was trying to get elected? Now it seems that lobbyists are the only people qualified to work in his administration.

When Obama DID nominated a qualified person for Commerse (Senator Gregg), he then drove him off by taking away all the department's responsibilities and essentially explaining that Gregg would be the "token experienced person".

Don't forget the Treasury secretary who didn't know how to do his taxes. That's good for a laugh, except then he had no idea what his plan was for saving the banks -- way to go, yes we can, ruin the economy.

When Obama said yesterday that he had never been in a helicopter, so he didn't know why he would need new Presidential copters, someone had to explain to him that the beanie with the propeller on his head wasn't the real Presidential copter, and that the real ones were fine except for the getting old and falling apart thing.

The hazard of overreaching

2009-02-25T01:09:00.002-04:00

My column this week in the Manassas Journal Messenger is about overreaching in the illegal immigration policy debate.

Both sides are guilty of it. Mr. Sign Guy might be learning that by flouting the law, he does his cause great disservice. The HSM folks may someday learn that by pushing draconian rules that can't in the end be enforced and which eventually are revoked, they just make things worse.

The most recent example is Bob Marshall's attempt to put into law a requirement for proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. Unfortunately, because Bob was smart enough to know we couldn't retroactively force millions of Virginia citizens to re-register with proof of their citizenship, the anti-illegal crowd falsely labelled him "pro-amnesty", and joined forces with the pro-amnesty folks to defeat his bill.

The fact is that if the anti-illegal folks had their way with this bill, in a year they would have so many people mad at them that it would greatly hurt the cause of the anti-illegal movement, much like the overreaching on the local business license rule has led to gutting the rule and leaving us worse off than before.

Because, make no mistake about it, even those who hate the idea of illegals voting would have been pissed off at having to take time out of their own busy schedules to prove to the government that they were legal citizens.

If we had passed Marshall's bill, we would have stopped illegals from registering. Then we could have taken the next step, which would be to allow the registrar to revoke registrations when it was found that the registrant was not a legal resident. We didn't need to force everybody to prove their innocence -- over time, it all would have settled out.

But because of their stupidity, we have no bill, and illegals can still register to vote, so long as they are willing to say they are legally here.

Who is Obessed with Race?

2009-02-21T19:11:00.003-04:00

This past week Attorney General Eric Holder proclaimed that, when it comes to race, we are a "nation of cowards".

While it is unfortunate that our country's AG is so quick to generalize and stereotype, it is certainly true that a good number of people in our country are scared to death when it comes to race.

And incidents like this week's flare-up over a New York Post cartoon attacking the stimulus package are a good reason why.

See, over the past two months, the Democrats in the House of Representatives, led by Congressman David Obey, have crafted a horrible attack on the foundations of American Society, which they called the "stimulus" bill.

And the New York Post knows that this bill is a piece of garbage which will do little if anything to help our economy, except for the general good that spending an extra trillion dollars would do to ANY economy.

And also this past week, a woman was mauled by a chimpanzee, which had to be killed. And a New York Post cartoonist noticed that, much like the woman was mauled by a chimpanzee, our nation has been mauled by the democrats who wrote the stimulus package.

And since the chimpanzee was shot to death by police, the cartoonist drew a picture of the chimp being shot by two police, with a caption suggesting we needed someone else to write the NEXT stimulus bill.

Now, if this were 2004, with republicans controlling government and Bush in the white house, such a cartoon would be well-accepted. Heck, people drew all sorts of cartoons with chimps, and baboons, and other animals to depict various members of the republican party, including Bush, Powell, Rice, and other members of the administration.

But now we have a "Black President". And apparently, some dimwits think that this "Black President" actually wrote the "stimulus package", when in fact he had nothing to do with it. And further, these people (who supposedly are the "enlightened" people) equate black people with monkeys, so when they saw a monkey in a cartoon, they immediately thought of Obama, even though he is neither a monkey nor the author of a stimulus package.

And then they attacked the cartoonist for "being racist", when it was these people who were the racists for thinking Obama was a chimpanzee, and idiots for thinking he wrote the stimulus package.

So, when Eric Holder says we are cowards when it comes to race, he should look at this incident, and realise that no white person alive is "comfortable" with ANYTHING having to do with race, since anything a white person does will be misconstrued as "racist".

We will NOT have a proper colorblind society so long as people define themselves by their color, expect to be treated special because of their color, think that acheivement should be measured by their color, want handouts and laws favoring them because of their color, and so long as any person of color feels comfortable launching vile, unprovoked and unwarranted attacks on white people's character simply because they are white.

We could start with the notion that black people need blacks representing them in politics. It's time to stop drawing congressional districts to ensure "black people" get elected. The nation, which is 80% NOT BLACK, just elected a "Black Man" as president. If blacks can't be represented by white people, then how are 80% of the people of this country represented by a "Black Man"?

Fact is, white people learned long ago that the "Black Man" could well represent them. And given that the Democratic Party can only find it in it's heart to allow ONE "Black Man" to sit in the U.S. Senate (and they may be trying to throw him out now), I'm thinking the minorities in the Democratic Party are quite used to being represented by rich white fools.

God will not condone taking innocent life

2009-02-05T23:46:00.002-04:00

Today Barack Obama made a statement that is true, even though Obama doesn't appear to understand the truth of what he said:

We know there is no God who condones the killing of an innocent human being.

Here is the video:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The One True God does not condone the taking of innocent life (as this is not a religious discussion, we will gloss over the inconvenient truth that "none are righteous, no not one").

But surely there is none as close to "innocence" as those humans who have yet to breathe their first independent breath -- and these are the very ones who Obama has worked so hard to kill.

Further, it is interesting that he invokes this claim as a way of suggesting that all religions are good. But in fact we KNOW that there are people who, in the name of their religion, kill innocent people, and who even use their scriptures to condone this.

So Obama is using his imperfect concept of God and innocence and religion to espouse a world view that is false. And he seems to be formulating a foreign policy based on his misguided, religious notion of the basic goodness of humanity.

If this were a conservative Christian, the ACLU and the anti-religious forces would be up in arms over a President who used his misguided religious beliefs to guide his actions.

The truth is that there are religions which want us dead. And Obama, like it or not, is our President, and as our President he has an obligation and a duty to protect us from those people who follow religions which want us dead.

And, like it or not, President Obama, it is your constitutional duty to wage war against those forces of religions which seek to destroy our country -- not to try to play nice under some dangerous and naive notion that "people of faith" can't possibly do us harm.

How many of us will have to die before Obama wises up? Fortunately, we are still relatively safe in our country. Unfortunately, allies like Israel may suffer tremendously at the hands of those anti-innocent religious fanatics who will kill them, while Obama tries to make nice.

I feel like I'm in one of those movies where people are being killed left and right, and the poor misguided non-hero is standing there in the middle of it all, looking around in bewilderment, and saying "but they are a PEACEFUL PEOPLE".....

Summary: Obama knows that the one True God will not condone killing the innocent. But in his misguided naivete, he will refuse to protect the truly innocent unborn children from the evil hands of doctors who will torture and brutally murder them with the permission of their ignorant mothers, while he makes nice with "people of faith" who will seek to do the same to the rest of us.

Should a president be burned out after two weeks?

2009-02-04T05:46:00.002-04:00

I realise these are trying times. However, a young, well-fit President like Obama should be able to last more than two weeks, even if he wasn't taking time off for super bowl parties and roasts.

Sometimes I get burned out at work, and just use a half-day of vacation to get out and get some fresh air. But I'm pretty sure I didn't do this two weeks after I started the job.

But today, exactly 14 days after taking the oath of office, Obama had had enough of all the pressure of defending democrats who failed to pay their taxes, so he and his wife ran off to read books at a local elementary school.

Oddly, no news media made fun of him for doing so, not at all like they treated Bush when he had a scheduled elementary school reading that was interrupted by the 9/11 attacks.

Obama of course is in a critical time for his new administration, trying to figure out if government can do anything right for the economy. But already he's managed to pick 3 nominees that had to quit, he's made fun of the DC school system for not risking it's children on icy roads, and held a super bowl party while millions of hard-working americans were losing their jobs.

He also found time to attend a private comedy roast.

And now, to escape the heat of the oval office, he hid with a bunch of school kids, who were rightly happy to have him.

And when Obama was asked why he was there, and not doing his job, Obama said:

"We were just tired of being in the White House."

I know a lot of people who are tired of Obama being in the White House. But my goodness, it's only been 14 days. I think Clinton lasted longer before he threw up his hands and said he had never worked harder but he just couldn't keep his campaign promise and give a child tax credit.

And it's not like Obama has been working 24/7. One day he was just wandering around and stumbled into the press office, only to leave after they had the audacity to ask him why he was there. And he threw a grand Super bowl party, which the media spun as showing how much better he was than Bush, since Bush would have gone to bed early instead of spending taxpayer dollars on beer and pretzels.

OK, I don't know if they had beer and pretzels.

Oh, and last week he had a coctail party. This is supposedly part of his plan to "return the white house to the people". Of course, we aren't invited to his parties, only elected politicians and people he can try to bribe into supporting his agenda. Somehow this is more "open" than the Bush policy of actually living in his house.

A President has to have a social life as well, and I don't begrudge a man the superbowl. But 3 parties, a half-dozen fluff interviews, and a reading trip all in the first two weeks?

For Gene Robinson, "Gay" means more than "Christian".

2009-01-12T21:01:00.003-04:00

How else to interpret his comments about being chosen to lead prayer at the We are One event:

"It is also an indication of the new president's commitment to being the President of all the people. "...[I]t will be my great honor to be there representing... all of us in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community" Robinson said.

I'm betting Rick Warren, who has been castigated for being chosen to give an invoation, would never say he was representing "the heterosexual community". Real Christian pastors know that they represent Jesus Christ to the world. That Gene thinks his job is to represent a sinful lifestyle is more indication of how incompatable his prediliction is with his so-called calling.

Lest we misunderstood his statement, Gene makes it clear that he has no intention of representing the Lord Jesus Christ:

"I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer.'"

Since he makes it a point not to be especially Christian in his life, it's not surprising his prayers won't be Christian. And of course, it's also clear his prayers will be meaningless.

Some people seem to think that the mere act of "prayer" provides some efficacy. They are sadly mistaken. Prayer is only useful to the degree it provides supplication to the One who created us, through the one who died to save us. There is no such thing as a non-christian "prayer", at least not in a useful sense.

Better to not have public prayer at all, then to make a mockery of the act by inviting a man who has so little faith in his own "God" that he neither trusts God to save him from his sin, to help him turn from his sin, or to suffer the slings and barbs by openly professing his faith through his prayer.

28,636 Christmas Lights.

2008-12-14T23:55:00.000-04:00

I've finished installing my christmas lights for 2008. I believe I have 28,636 lights this year, although I could have lost count somewhere so I could be off by a few hundred one way or another.

I guess I could demand a recount.

Coming to Kings Dominion

2008-12-04T23:30:00.005-04:00

One side-effect of being a theme park junkie is that new rides are not always so new.

In 2007, we spent two days at Geauga Lake in Ohio. It was a lovely little park -- I even wrote a column about it.

At the end of that season, Cedar Fair Properties (which owns many parks) shut down the Geauga Lake theme park, leaving only the Wildwater Kingdom water park.

They actually had been sending rides from Geauga to other parks even before they shut it down, but in 2008 Kings Dominion got the "Dominator" roller coaster, which we had already ridden in GL.

This year, Kings Dominion will get, for the first time ever, a ferris wheel. When Kings Dominion first opened, they vowed to never have a ferris wheel, which they associated with country fairs. I love ferris wheels, so I always wished they had one.

This spring KD will get the ferris wheel from Geauga Lake, along with another interesting ride shaped like a huge Cadillac.

Here is a picture I took of the ferris wheel when we visited GL:

How the Democrats will steal the Minnesota Senate seat.

2008-11-26T03:45:00.003-04:00

It seems that the recount in the Minnesota Senate race will conclude with Norm Coleman still up by a couple hundred votes.

Further, while the Al Franken team will make a big deal about absentee ballots, it is unlikely the courts will agree to count ballots which clearly do not meet the legal requirements for acceptance.

But I don't think Franken really cares. I mean, it would be easier for the Democrats if he could manufacture enough votes in the recount to win, but they have a plan which will work in any case.

The first part of the plan has already succeeded. Al Franken got a judge to violate the sacrosanct rule of the "secret ballot", providing the Franken campaign with the names, and addresses of every absentee ballot that was rejected.

Franken's team has now contacted all those people, asking them if they were Franken supporters. No doubt they are finding Coleman people, but they will be ignored.

The next step will be for Franken's team to get every Franken voter to sign an affidavit asserting that they voted for Al Franken in the election.

Simple probability suggests that about half the rejected ballots will be Franken supporters, so they should easily be able to find over 3000 people to sign.

Normally, this wouldn't be any help. I mean, you could also call registered voters, and ask if they voted, and if not, get them to sign affidavits that they WANTED to vote and WOULD have voted for Al Franken. The courts still wouldn't accept them as actual votes.

But that's not the point. See, the Democrats have control over the Senate. And the constitution puts the Senate as the final arbiter of elections for the Senate.

So next January, when it's time to seat the new Senators, the Senate Democrats will note "irregularities" in Minnesota, and will bring the question up for a vote. And then the affidavits will be presented. And the DEmocrats will note that, while the law in Minnesota didn't allow those votes to be counted, it is CLEAR that those votes WERE cast and were for Franken.

And since the Senate doesn't have to abide by the Minnesota law, the Democrats will vote to count the extra ballots, and award the election to Franken. It won't matter that nobody checked the OTHER absentee ballots. The Media will go along with what the Democrats do, so there won't even be an outrage.

It's happened before -- the Democrats once refused to seat a republican House candidate winner, putting in the losing Democrat instead. And nobody batted an eye.

I suppose the Coleman camp could try to counter this by calling all the absentee names and getting THEIR supporters to sign affidavits. But there's no reason to suspect the Democrats in the Senate would accept them.

Twilight

2008-11-21T20:24:00.002-04:00

I'm just back from seeing the movie "Twilight". I'm not going to give away the movie or the book plot, but if you don't like people commenting on the nuts and bolts, you can skip this anyway.

I didn't think I'd like the Bella character after watching the trailers, but I liked her in the movie.

I also liked Alice, and we didn't see enough of her. If there are "Team Edward" and "Team Jacob" (and apparently a warped "Team James"), I'm definitely "Team Alice".

Characters weren't very developed in the movie. One of the things I liked about the book was the character development -- it wasn't deep, but I felt like I got the essense of the characters. That was not well-translated to the movie. I don't feel like I really know any of the people based on the movie.

They ignored Jasper, which given how little development any other characters got isn't so surprising, but I would have hated to have been given that role hoping to make it into something.

I don't like spinning camera shots. I got dizzy a couple of times in the movie -- in both cases NOT during "action" sequences, but when the characters were basically standing or lying still.

In general, I felt the book survived the movie. My son, who has not read the book, said he got lost in the movie, and I guess there are times where having read the book is probably necessary to really understand what is happening.

Sparkling Edward could have used some better CGI or something. I know I'm a guy, but my daughter agrees that he looked worse sparkling, when it was supposed to be "magnificent".

In general, I think they could have spent more money on makeup. The vampires too often looked like people with way too much makeup. I actually think Powder made the guy white better than they did in this movie.

There were a few things that simply didn't match what my mind had imagined when reading the book. The two biggest are that I pictured Bella's house to be in the woods a bit, not on a street with curbs; and I pictured the school as being out on a plain and being a bunch of small buildings you had to walk outside to get from one class to another -- not an urban-looking building in the heart of the "city".

They did catch the essence of the "dreary small-town" otherwise. I loved the logging truck.

I thought Edward's car was sufficiently cool, but my daughter did not.

Vote McCain -- Obama 1.5 hours late for his rally.

2008-11-03T23:27:00.003-04:00

McCain is no conservative, and I disagree with him on a lot of issues. He loves to work with Democrats, and to compromise, and to do all those things that the media always tells us are important in a good leader.

I disagree with Obama on everything, and he's a liberal who never works with Republicans on anything, and would if he was republican be dismissed as a far-right extremist.

But because the media wants a Democrat, they pretend McCain is out of the mainstream and they hide everything about Obama so people might think Obama is just an ordinary moderate.

Vote McCain.

I'm stuck here within a mile of Obama's "final rally", I've had to listen to their music, and all their speeches. Obama was supposed to be here at 9pm, but it's 10:30 and he's not there yet.

Obama can't even show up on time for his own rallies. He is no way ready to be President.

Minutemen get it.

2008-10-15T21:21:00.003-04:00

Unlike some people who seem too full of themselves to understand what is at stake in the November elections, the Minutemen show that they know exactly what needs to be done for the good of the country. From an e-mail alert:

Fellow Patriots,

Early in the presidential race we announced our intentions not to endorse anyone for president. And we’ve strictly adhered to that policy throughout this long and arduous process.

But . . .

What we did NOT announce is any intention to refrain from opposing a particular candidate for president! It has been clear from DAY ONE that we have in Sen. McCain a potential president who -- at the very best -- would be indifferent to the dire need to secure our borders.

And -- at the worst -- McCain would be a rubber stamp for a blanket amnesty program from the leftist Congress led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Despite McCain’s recent proclamations regarding securing the border as a first priority -- as the saying goes -- his actions speak so loudly, we can’t hear a word he’s saying.

. . . So an endorsement for McCain is absolutely out of the question!

That said, recent and VERY ALARMING DETAILS have surfaced about Sen. Barack Obama’s plans for our country, should he be elected president on Nov. 4th.

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These radical socialist plans include the following:
*Giving drivers licenses to ALL illegal aliens in the U.S.
*Passing a sweeping amnesty program, giving citizenship to 12 million illegal aliens
*Giving a tax rebate [i.e. free money] to illegal workers here in the U.S.
*Dialoguing with terrorist nations and regimes without precondition
*Forcing banks to lend money to illegal aliens
*Registering illegal aliens to vote in EVERY state of the union

. . . And those are just the details we know about so far!

My fellow patriots, we CANNOT afford an Obama presidency! Barack Obama’s unapologetic association with known terrorists, racists, criminals, and the politically corrupt may be the final nail in the coffin of our once great republic.

BUT WE ARE NOT GOING TO STAND BY AND LET IT HAPPEN! NOT ON OUR WATCH!!!

The Minuteman PAC has already invested key independent expenditures (IEs) in several of the battleground states to aid efforts to inform voters about Obama's true socialist agenda.

AND, we are making serious headway! Polls have suggested that Obama’s approval rating is set to drop back down in the days preceding the election! That’s why we need your help! NOW!!!

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It’s hard to imagine the United States under an Obama administration. But, make no mistake! Barack Obama will stop at nothing to throw our national sovereignty and security under the bus...

If Obama is elected:
-We can say goodbye to secure borders . . .
-We can forget any last vestige of national sovereignty . . .
-We can expect more terrorist attacks on our own soil . . .
-We can kiss away our individual freedom and free enterprise . . .
-And we can toss the 10th Amendment into the dust bin of history . . .

In short, when Barack Obama leaves the White House, the U.S. will resemble France more than the republic for which our founders sacrificed their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.”

In fact, everything the Minutemen at Lexington and Concord fought for will be lost!!!

That’s why in these last weeks and days before the election, we need your help more than ever! Many of you have given to the Minuteman PAC efforts time and again, just as the Minutemen patriots of 1776 fought battle after battle.

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We have to stand firm against the forces of the left, just as our forefathers stood against the tyranny of the Red Coats!!!

Nothing less than the future of our republic is at stake! THERE ARE LESS THAN 3 WEEKS LEFT!

Please stand with us now and fight alongside the Minuteman PAC! We MUST put everything on the line NOW!

For America,
Brett Farley
Executive Director
Minuteman PAC

P.S. Barack Obama’s radical agenda of open borders, drivers licenses to illegal aliens, free money to illegal aliens, sweeping amnesty, and appeasement for terrorists is marching toward victory on Nov. 4th. But we’re already engaged in an entrenched battle to stop him! We need your urgent help to reveal the truth about Obama to voters in key battleground states.

EVERYTHING is at stake this election. Please join us now!

They are right. You don't have to like McCain's position on Illegal Immigrants to know that Obama will be worse. in 2006, too many voters decided to turn their back on conservatives and republicans and elect Democrats, figuring the republicans needed to be taught a lesson.

Now we can look back at the last two years, and see all the "lessons" we taught -- to our selves.

Now is no time to teach any more lessons. We cannot afford 4 years of Barack Obama with a Democratic congress.

Temporary Blindness

2008-10-06T20:24:00.002-04:00

Well, not quite.

I had a minor tear in my right retina. I noticed the blood on Wednesday, and they lasered it Wednesday night (Wonderful doctor). It tore a tiny bit more Friday night, and I got a little more laser treatment Saturday morning.

I'm not allowed to do computers much at all, so I've dropped off the net. I hope to be back by this weekend.

The difference between a leader and the Obama succubus.

2008-09-28T17:00:00.004-04:00

Obama is a succubus, doing nothing except living off of the acheivements and ideas of others. If anything good happens, he takes credit. If something bad happens, he has no idea what you are talking about.

McCain is a leader.

You can see this on the bailout. When McCain is asked if he should get credit for the final bill (and believe me, he deserves all the credit for backing the house Republicans and making this a much better bill, AND bringing everybody to the table to make it happen), McCain refused to give himself any credit.

Meanwhile, Obama not only takes all the credit, but he specifically says McCain doesn't deserve any credit.

Obama never learned about not blowing your own horn. Obama is his own orchestra. Obama needs more hands so he can slap himself on the back more.

Fox News covers the ever-bragging, never-acheiving Obama:

WASHINGTON -- Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Sunday his Republican rival deserves no credit for helping to forge a tentative agreement on the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street.
Instead, Obama said he deserves credit for making sure the proposal includes safeguards for taxpayers. Obama said he is inclined to support the bailout because it includes increased oversight, relief for homeowners facing foreclosure and limits on executive compensation for chief executives of firms that receive government help.

The sad thing for Obama is that, if he just waited a day, the Media would give him all the credit anyway, because the media is entirely in the tank for Obama. He didn't HAVE to falsely claim credit, the Media would have done the work and he could has said "oh, shucks", except I doubt he even knows what that means.

The story instead slaps Obama down for his self-aggrandizement:

The safeguards were supported by many in Congress, including Democrats and Republicans.

Obama asked for what everybody wanted. That's what Obama does -- he never seems to do the hard thing.

Meanwhile, McCain is being a true leader, from This Week:

Stephanopoulos: "What role did you play? How were you helpful do you believe in the process?"

John McCain: "I will let you and others be the judge of that. I did the best that I could. I came back because I wasn't going to phone it in. America is in a crisis of almost unprecedented proportions. I should be doing whatever little I can to help this process. I'm a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. I got to get in the arena when America needs it, and if that judgment wants to be made whether I helped or hurt, I'll be glad to accept the judgment of history. But I'm never going to not get engaged when the taxpayers and middle class of America are in danger of losing everything literally that they've worked all their lives for. I'm going to be out working on it. I won't claim a bit of credit, okay, if that makes them feel better. But I'm going to be there working and trying to help solve this crisis. And I'm proud of John Boehner and Roy Blunt and Adam Putnam and all of the guys and men and women, Marsha Blackburn and others who in the House of Representatives stood up and got into these negotiations and became part of the solution."

McCain came to Washington when Obama said "call me if you need me". The democrats realized Obama was making a fool of himself, and called him in to "speak" for them. That nearly derailed the meeting and the bailout. It took serious work by McCain to undo the damage, while the democrats ran around playing politics. Eventually, we got rid of all the left's playtoys, and McCain deserves all the credit, even though he won't take it.

Obama exploits dead soldier against parent's wishes.

2008-09-28T16:50:00.004-04:00

In Friday's debate, Obama fumbled repeatedly. The most obvious example is that, when he tried a simple tactic of saying "me to about wearing the bracelet of a dead soldier, he couldn't even remember the man's name.

But now it turns out that the family of that soldier and hero, Sergeant Ryan David Jopek, had asked Obama not to wear their son's bracelet, because they didn't like him using it for his political gain.

From "Family told Obama not to wear bracelet":

Shockingly, however, Madison resident Brian Jopek, the father of Ryan Jopek, the young soldier who tragically lost his life to a roadside bomb in 2006, recently said on a Wisconsin Public Radio show that his family had asked Barack Obama to stop wearing the bracelet with his son's name on it. Yet Obama continues to do so despite the wishes of the family.

Jopek supported the war in Iraq, and he and his family oppose Obama's surrender strategy. The mother gave Obama the bracelet simply so he would remember her son:

Jopek says his wife gave Obama the bracelet because "she just wanted Mr. Obama to know Ryan's name." Jopek went on to say that "she wasn't looking to turn it into a big media event" and "just wanted it to be something between Barack Obama and herself." Apparently, they were all shocked it became such a big deal.

Now, of course, Obama exploited their son's death for his own political gain. Obama exploits a lot of people for his own gain. Worse, since the mother actually supports Obama, she's gone into hiding, meaning Obama is exploiting her support as well:

To pile insult onto injury here, the Mother doesn't even want to force the issue of telling Obama to stop exploiting her son because she wants to see him win the election. Obama is not only taking advantage of this brave soldier's death, he is taking advantage of the good wishes of the man's Mother who doesn't want to hurt the campaign.

If I can find this story, why can't the Washington Post? Could it be the news media has decided that, whatever it takes, Obama has to win this election?

Update: The Obama camp knows how to put pressure on people. Too bad the media simply ignores this. Nobody will ever know what the Obama campaign did to Jopek's mother, but they got her to come public with a statement that she was happy Obama mentioned her son's name at the debate.

So now the media can ignore all the stories from earlier this year where the family told him to stop talking about him. Because Obama can do no wrong. No matter how many crucial foreign policy issues he messed up at the debate, he's ready to be President. If anybody says otherwise, the Obama gestapo will find some way to make them "see the light".

Update again. OK, turns out AP was a little bit too much in the bag for Obama with their headline about his Jopek's mother being "ectstatic". Here's the AP story now:

MILWAUKEE - After Tracy Jopek gave Sen. Barack Obama a bracelet in honor of her son who was killed in Iraq, she asked Obama not to mention the bracelet on the campaign trail.

But Jopek told The Associated Press on Sunday that she's satisfied with how Obama discussed it during last week's presidential debate.

So, she confirms that the bracelet was NOT meant as a campaign prop. Obama obviously ignored her wishes, and used it as a Campaign Prop. Now, because she really wants Obama to win, she says she is "satisfied" with how Obama discussed it. What else would she say -- she doesn't want to hurt him, even after Obama has hurt her, her family, and the memory of her son.

Killing 2 Babies to detect 3 Down's babies

2008-09-20T23:47:00.004-04:00

Sarah Palin's VP candidacy shines the light of truth on the issue of Down's syndrome babies. Often the discussion focuses only on the hardships for parents, suggesting that Down's babies should be killed to spare the parents the trouble.

Others argue that the Down's baby itself should be killed to save the baby from a lifetime of being a Down's child. Four million living Down's cases today seems a reasonable counter-argument to that bizarre claim that humans would be better off dead than alive.

But now a study in the UK shows that there is a far greater toll exacted by the modern-day biogenicists who seek to breed a more perfect humanity by brow-beating mothers into killing their unborn on the off chance they will be down's children.

From lifesitenews:

LONDON, September 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The invasive procedures used to detect Down syndrome in unborn children result in the miscarriages of two healthy children for every three Down babies detected, a British study has found.
...
The DSEI research, which authors admit is only an "estimate" of the number of deaths of non-Down children, is backed up by findings published last year by Dr. Hylton Meire. Meire calculated that for every 50 children with Down syndrome successfully identified and killed by abortion, 160 non-affected babies are lost by miscarriage after the test.

Note that the referenced previous findings are actually much worse than 2 deaths for 3 aborted Down's kids.

This is an estimate, because, as the authors note:

The NHS admits of a miscarriage rate of only one to two percent following the invasive testing. However, the NHS only tracks statistics for Down syndrome children killed by abortion or who subsequently die as a result of miscarriage. The DSEI researchers said that the official statistics do not count the number of healthy children lost to miscarriages caused by the tests.

If you use the NHS numbers, for every 100 amnios, there would be one dead child. But since they only track dead Down's children, the statistics for healthy babies are hidden from the public.

According to this study:

The study's researchers, from the charity Down Syndrome Education International (DSEI), estimate that in the process of detecting and aborting 660 Down babies annually, screening leads to the deaths of 400 babies who do not have the disorder in England and Wales alone. Based upon their findings, the researchers are calling into question the ethical standing of the government's policy of offering screening to all pregnant women.

I remember having the discussion of Amnio for one of our children, because of an "abnormality" detected in an ultrasound which later proved to be a false reading. They did tell us there was a serious risk of losing the baby.

Now, imagine a test on a born child, which detects something for which there will be no treatment, that is done solely for the pleasure of the parent, and which has a 1/100 chance of killing the child.

We'd not only ban the process, we'd banish those who thought to do such a thing.

But because we are talking pre-born children, our medical profession seems to see nothing wrong with killing thousands of healthy, wanted babies in order to enforce their new world order where down's children are wiped off the face of the earth.

Governor Palin chose life for her Down's child. Barack Obama says he wouldn't want his children to be "punished" for a mistake, so he supported killing babies that are already born, if they are born as a result of a botched abortion.

But I wonder if he supports killing thousands of wanted healthy children simply to identify the "undesirable" children to be killed by abortion.

Obama Attacks McCain for TRUE charge McCain did NOT make

2008-09-20T21:03:00.002-04:00

I think Obama says so many things wrong so that we can't possibly keep up.

In this latest news, Obama is really upset about an advertisement which truthfully exposes his vote against the Born Alive Act in Illinois, which I wrote about some months ago.

So Obama has lashed out, attacking McCain for "lying" about Obama's position.

Two problems. First, as I've shown before, it's not a lie. Heck, even the Obama campaign itself had to admit it's true he opposed the bill, and that the bill was exactly what was in the Federal bill. And there is tape of Obama specifically saying he opposed the bill because it might force government between the doctor and the patient if a baby is born alive after an abortion -- which clearly shows he's fine with the doctor killing an aborted baby, without interference from the government.

But more importantly, John McCain has NEVER attacked Obama about the Born Alive bill. In fact, the advertisement running against Obama is from a woman who actually WAS born alive, and is paid for by a 527, not the McCain campaign.

But the media has printed Obama's charges against McCain, and not one mainstream media outlet has chosen to inform their readers that Obama can't even listen to a 30-second advertisement without getting it's facts wrong. That's a pretty important thing if you want to be President, and the readers and voters deserve the truth, not the whitewash the media is doing.

Obama Scares Seniors, Lies about McCain's plan to save Social Security

2008-09-20T11:06:00.003-04:00

The Obama campaign has no plan to save Social Security. Like so many Democrats, and many Republicans, they are content to lie to the American People, promising benefits they can't deliver in exchange for taking people's money.

Obama's only suggestions on this problem are to raise the social security contributions by eliminating the cap. He doesn't say if he would likewise raise the payout limits. Social Security is supposedly an insurance-type program, where people pay in, and then get benefits out. based on how much they put in.

The cap is simply where we decided the benefits were enough. Raising the cap and the benefits won't help the system. Raising the cap without raising benefits makes SS into just another welfare program.

In either case, it won't fix the problem.

But rather than encourage debate on the issue, the Obama campaign has decided to scare our parents with a false advertisement claiming McCain will cut their benefits in half.

The Obama ad is SO OUTRAGEOUS that even factcheck.org, which is owned by the Annaburg foundation, the foundation he is closely associated with and run by his friends, had to call him on it.

From Factcheck.org, harsh words for the candidate who promised he would run a clean, positive campaign, in their article "Scaring Seniors":

An Obama-Biden ad says McCain supports "cutting benefits in half" for Social Security recipients. False!

That's not "Misleading", that's "Lie".

A new Obama ad characterizes the "Bush-McCain privatization plan" as "cutting Social Security Benefits in half." This is a falsehood sure to frighten seniors who rely on their Social Security checks. In truth, McCain does not propose to cut those checks at all.

Remember, on Friday Obama said that in these difficult times, we shouldn't be playing politics, or scaring people with our economic plans.

But now we find out that Obama is quietly running these ads, using the current turmoil to scare our parents, grandparents, and others, by lying about what McCain has supported, and will do as President.

I say "quietly" because apparently Obama's campaign didn't announce these ads. Normally, the campaign makes a big deal about ads. It's clear they knew these ads were false, and they wanted to keep their "distance". As FactCheck says:

The Obama campaign made no announcement of this ad and won't say where they intend to run it. It was first aired on a station in Flint, Mich. on Sept. 16, where it was recorded by the Campaign Media Analysis Group of TNSI Media Intelligence. According to CMAG, the ad has been running in Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Factcheck had to get a recording of the ad. I don't know if that means it isn't on YouTube. If it was NOT put out on YouTube by the campaign, that would be further evidence that the campaign was trying to hide the ad for as long as possible, to take maximum advantage of last week's stock market turmoil to scare seniors, McCain's best voter group, into voting for Obama instead.

Here are the MANY DIFFERENT WAYS that Obama's secret ad lies:

The three votes featured in the ad are from 1998 and 2006. ... None would have actually resulted in changing Social Security without additional, specific legislation.
...
The ad implies that Bush's plan bets the whole lot of Social Security funds on unstable stocks. In fact, it would have "privatized" only a small portion of Social Security taxes that Americans could have invested in private accounts, if they chose to do so.
...
The ad goes on to claim that the Bush (and McCain) plan would cut "benefits in half." This is a rank misrepresentation: Nobody now getting benefits, or even close to retirement, would have seen any reduction in benefits or cost-of-living adjustments under the plan Bush proposed in April, 2005.

Factcheck also explains that only future higher-income workers would see a reduction in benefits from the current unpayable projections. Low-income people would not have a reduction. And that reduction doesn't include the extra money from the private accounts.

Factcheck then examines the "cut in half", and shows that it's based on a false premise from one of Obama's MANY economic advisors:

The Obama-Biden campaign attempts to document their "cutting benefits in half" claim by citing a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities written by Jason Furman, who is currently one of Obama's top economic advisers. This won't do.

What Furman's study actually says is quite different from what the ad claims. Furman's report says that the "progressive price indexing" plan Bush supported would result in benefits for the average worker who retires in 2075 that are 28 percent lower than under the current formula. Obviously 28 percent is not "half."

The Obama-Biden campaign notes that Furman's paper also says that full price indexing of benefits – even for low-income workers – would result in benefits 49 percent lower than the current formula in 2075. But that's not the plan Bush supported, and we find no evidence that McCain ever supported it either. We asked the Obama campaign to show us where McCain has ever supported full price indexing of benefits, but so far they have not done so.

Note that they don't even raise the objection of a campaign citing the statement of their own campaign worker as "proof", just that they couldn't even get that right. Now, think about that -- what kind of economic advisor would allow a campaign to misuse his own supposedly scholarly work? Is that the kind of economic advisor we need right now, when our system is teetering precisely because economic advisors allowed the decisionmakers to misuse their scholarly work?

Factcheck closes with an admission that while McCain is TRYING to fix Social Security, Obama is making it harder by playing politics:

The system isn't exactly "going broke." But the latest official projection is that the trust fund will be exhausted by the year 2041, after which current tax rates will finance only 78 percent of currently scheduled benefits. We agree that "straight talk" is needed and that finding solutions will be hard. Ads like this, however, misinform the public and make the job of fixing the system more difficult.

Obama is DIshonorable (Obama Admits Talking to Raines)

2008-09-18T21:15:00.015-04:00

UPDATE: in http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/20/1428904.aspx, Obama admits he did talk on the phone to Raines, but says that doesn't count as getting advice. I do sympathize -- whatever advice he got from Raines, it was probably bad advice. But with 300 advisors, I hardly see how Obama talks to ANY of them for more than about 5 minutes, unless he has a lot of free time on his hands.

I don't generally like to attribute negative characteristics about "honor" to a candidate. I know that John McCain wouldn't throw around "dishonorable".

But the Obama campaign has decided to make sure they call McCain "dishonorable" at least once a day. And since most of their attacks on McCain are actually lies, I think it's clear WHO it is who is dishonorable.

The latest comes today. First, some background. Two articles in the Washington Post from July:

On The Outside, Watching Fannie Mae Falter, Washington Post, July 16, 2008:

In the four years since he stepped down as Fannie Mae's chief executive under the shadow of a $6.3 billion accounting scandal, Franklin D. Raines has been quietly constructing a new life for himself. He has shaved eight points off his golf handicap, taken a corner office in Steve Case's D.C. conglomeration of finance, entertainment and health-care companies and more recently, taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.

After this article came out, Obama said nothing, and Raines said nothing.

Then the WP had an editorial "Tough Decision Coming", Washington Post , 8/27/2008:

Two members of Mr. Obama's political circle, James A. Johnson and Franklin D. Raines, are former chief executives of Fannie Mae.

Response from Obama, Johnson, and Raines? None at all. James Johnson was actually picked by Obama to vet his VP candidates, but then fired.

OK, so fast-forward 3 weeks. McCain, wanting to highlight how Obama and the Democrats had a hand in our current financial crisis, QUOTES THE WASHINGTON POST (h/t Corner at National Review):

Obama has no background in economics. Who advises him? The Post says it's Franklin Raines, for "advice on mortgage and housing policy."

Note that this exactly matches what the WP said: That Obama called Raines for "advice on mortgage and housing policy."

In other words, McCain's ad is absolutely true. Note that his ad is true even if Obama never spoke to Raines -- because McCain does not say "Obama was advised by Raines". He says "The Post says it's Franklin Raines".

Surely, no Media Outlet would put up with Obama calling THIS advertisement a lie, since they can all read English, they can see that the claim by McCain is true, and they can see that Obama has NEVER ASKED FOR A CORRECTION from the Washington Post.

But, the Media LOVES OBAMA. So of course, when Obama sends his campaign manager out to say it's a lie, they don't laugh him off the stage. Again, from the National Review:

This is another flat-out lie from a dishonorable campaign that is increasingly incapable of telling the truth. Frank Raines has never advised Senator Obama about anything — ever...

Note the word "dishonorable". Also note that I STILL have not found a single example of an actual LIE against Obama from a McCain ad.

Franklin Raines also now denies he talked with Obama. Maybe Obama and Raines are lying -- remember that 3 days ago Obama said it was a lie that he spoke about holding up negotiations with Iraq, but then his campaign advisor admitted that he HAD asked to hold up negotiations, while insisting this somehow different from what he was accused of.

Also remember Obama lied about McCain not knowing HOW to use e-mail, attacking McCain for his war injuries. And Obama lied about Palin, calling her the "former mayor of Wasilla" when she was in fact the current Governor of Alaska.

Also, Obama lied about McCain's being out of touch on the economy, quoting half-sentences from McCain who said that our economy was fundamentally strong because of the strength of our workers, but ALSO said the economy was hurting now.

Which leads me to wonder if Obama thinks the American worker is fundamentally weak. But if McCain ran an ad and said that, I'm sure Obama would call him a liar again.

Because calling people a liar without evidence is what dishonorable people do.

Barack Obama was supposed to be a new kind of politician -- one that rose above partisanship, and heralded a new, positive message of hope and change. But all we see now is biting partisan, lying, false attacks.

And a dope-smoking-crack-taking kid who never served a day in the military has no place calling a decorated war hero and servant of our country "dishonorable".

Of course, since Joe Biden just called all of us who oppose tax increases "unpatriotic", I guess it's fair game.

UPDATE: Oh, and the left-wing 1984-style "newspeak" police have done their job at Wikipedia, deleting all references about Barack Obama from the Franklin Raines entry.

Here is the entry from two days ago:

Franklin Delano Raines (born January 14, 1949 in Seattle, Washington) is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae who served as White House budget director under President Bill Clinton. He is currently employed by Barack Obama's Presidential Campaign as an economic adviser.
...
In June 2008 Wall Street Journal reported that Franklin Raines was one of several politicians who received below market rates loans at Countrywide Financial because the corporation considered the officeholders "FOA's"--"Friends of Angelo" (Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo). He received loans for over $3 million while CEO of Fannie Mae. [5] Franklin Raines is currently one of Barack Obama's chief economic advisers.

Here is the same entry today:

Franklin Delano Raines (born January 14, 1949 in Seattle, Washington) is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae who served as White House budget director under President Bill Clinton.
...
On September 18, 2008 the McCain Campaign claimed in an ad critical of Obama that based upon reports from the Washington Post, Franklin Raines is currently one of Barack Obama's economic advisers. Both Raines and the Obama Campaign claim that Raines is not an Obama advisor and has never advised Senator Obama. [9]

(UPDATE AGAIN: Wiki page has been updated again, to include the WP articles. I guess a battle is brewing)

At least it correctly notes that McCain's ad is based on the claim in the Post, proving that Obama is lying when he calls McCain a liar.

BTW, it's almost laughable to believe Obama never contacted Raines, since Raines gave him thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, and Obama actually picked Johnson to vet his VP nominee. Obama has been tied closely to this bank failure.

Obama of course can't deny that he received more money from Ginny Mae and Freddie Mac than every other senator except Chris Dodd. He can't really deny he's in the pocket of the special interests who caused this problem.

All he can do is get Raines to deny what the Washington Post reported, so he can call McCain a liar. He can't deny the bigger truth, so he'll try to change the subject.

Obama Commercial Misleads about Corning Company.

2008-09-18T21:15:00.014-04:00

Update: A commenter notes that the Obama ad, while it clearly implied and meant to mislead viewers into thinking that Corning opened a new plant overseas, replacing the plant in the U.S., it never actually SAYS this. So I have changed the word "lie" to "mislead".

Obama doesn't just lie about John McCain.

In an ad trying to scare people into voting for him, Obama mislead voters about the Corning company.

from the story "Corning Inc. Blasts Obama":

CORNING - A campaign ad by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has drawn fire from Corning Incorporated over its reference to the 2004 closure of a Corning glass plant.

Now, Obama was attacking Corning as a way to attack Bush for "allowing" jobs to go overseas, and then to blame McCain because he's an old white guy just like McCain and Obama knows that all white people are the same (even his grandmother, who he called a "typical white person").

"Corning shuts down its plant in Pennsylvania, hundreds lose their jobs, then the workers are rehired to disassemble the plant and ship the equipment to China. "

A perfect sob story for the whining Democratic Presidential wannabee.

Except it's not true:

However, Corning Inc. spokeswoman Kelli Hopp-Michlosky said those jobs were never sent to China. She said the plant closed because it made cathode ray tubes, and since the company no longer makes CRTs, those jobs were not needed elsewhere.

But Obama wouldn't let truth get in the way, making a misleading campaign ad falsely attacking McCain, or the hard-working companies that make this country go.

"We have been in touch with the Obama campaign on this expressing our displeasure and presenting all the facts so they see how misleading the ad appears. We will continue to speak with them on this," Mopp-Michlosky said.

Good luck on that. Obama doesn't have to apologize, he's the One. Media bows to his every whim. The media will help.

The Ad is about McCain shipping our jobs overseas. Using as an example a company that did NOT ship jobs overseas is telling in two ways. First, it shows that Obama won't let truth get in the way of a good yarn. Second, one wonders why the Obama campaign couldn't find a good example of a company that actually shipped jobs overseas. Why use a fake claim?

The President can't vote "Present" (Obama punts on AIG)

2008-09-18T21:15:00.010-04:00

Jonathan Marks, from the Politico, reports that the Obama campaign is adamant that their candidate has no position on the AIG bailout (at least Obama finally figured out what AIG stands for, after an embarrasing press release which got the name wrong while not giving Obama's position on the bailout).

In an article titled "Obama outraged at being accused of not supporting something he doesn't support":

Obama, on the trail in New Mexico, had this to say of McCain:"And today he accused me of not supporting what the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank did with AIG despite no evidence whatsoever that that’s what I had said."

(Apparently the teleprompter was on a potty break. I don't know where anybody got the idea that Obama is a communicator.

But apparently Obama doesn't think that refusing to support something is the same as not supporting it:

I
To recap, when I wrote earlier today that Obama supported the bailout, I quickly was instructed by his staff that this was not the case. He just didn't oppose it, I was told.

So Obama says he doesn't support the AIG bailout, but he doesn't oppose it either. McCain then says Obama doesn't support it, and Obama goes off on another of his hissy fits -- even though that's exactly what Obama said.

Jonathan finds this somewhat amusing:

Now he's so adamant about not opposing the Fed's move that he's complaining about McCain's portrayal.

Where, I wonder, is the line between not opposing and, ya know, supporting.

The fact is that in all of Obama's speeches, he has yet to say if he supported the AIG bailout, or opposed it. He is afraid to take a position, in case (like the surge) he comes up completely wrong again.

On the other hand, the much more experienced Sarah Palin, who has HAD TO MAKE REAL DECISIONS in her job, has made a clear statement on the bailout, as has John McCain. (Joe Biden said something about giving people toasters and how we are unpatriotic if we don't pay more taxes).

We can't afford a President who votes "Present". Obama keeps casting blame around, but has yet to say what he would do. Meanwhile, the leadership of the Senate and House (Democrats Pelosi and Reid) both announced earlier that they had no idea what to do, so they were going to adjourn and go on vacation and let Bush figure it out.

Which shows that, in the end, the DEmocrats have no idea how to run anything, and are just praying that Bush can rescue them.

And now I guess they won't have a vacation, since the Bush administration, while the democrats ran around screaming "it's not our fault" took McCain's advice (again) and have put together a short-term plan to halt the bleeding and maybe get us on the road to recovery.

I'm sure the Democrats, and Obama, will do everything they can to make sure the fix isn't in place until after the election. After all, Obama tried to get Iraq to stop negotiating for our troop force plan until after the election, so why wouldn't he also support waiting until later to fix the economy.

The Democrats need troops in Iraq, and a failing economy, to have any chance of winning in November.

Obama Welcomes Donor who stormed stage at RNC Convention

2008-09-18T21:15:00.007-04:00

Barack Obama is always talking about a "new kind of campaign". Well, that seems to include welcoming campaign supporters who steal press credentials and storm the stage at the RNC convention.

Here is part of the guest list for Obama's $28,000 a plate elitist fundraiser:

Table No. 29 Jodie Evans, Amanda Fairey, Shepard Fairey, Ellen Grinstein, Rami Kolahi, Ken Luskin, Jonathan Palevsky, Max Palevsky, Sylvie Rabineau, Frank Smith

Jodie Evans is the Code Pink activist who, as reported here, stole credentials from an RNC delegate, and used them to illegally enter the convention, where she STORMED the stage during Palin's address, and had to be subdued by Secret Service agents.

But apparently Obama supports this woman's actions, because far from returning her donations, he invited her to give more money.

And according to this report, Obama shook posed for pictures with the guests and shook their hands. There were no reports of anybody storming his stage while he spoke.

The event gave Obama a chance to make another stupid statement, when he said to a group of people sitting OUTSIDE in a COURTYARD:

“is about those who will never see the inside of a building like this and don't resent the success that's represented in this room, but just want the simple chance to be able to find a job that pays a living wage.”

Turns out the courtyard they were in is opened to the public, and even the building he was talking about has public tours one month a year. So it seems that anybody who could afford a trip to California could see the inside of a "building like this".

It's nice of Obama though to presume that all of his supporters don't resent the multi-millionares spending thousands of dollars on dinner while they worry about their mortgages and bank accounts which are threatened because Obama's friends made bad loans and Obama and the Democrats stood in the way blocking McCain's efforts to correct the problem before it was too late.

Obama IS the candidate for people who have no ambition, have no desire to move up in life, and want nothing more than government to guarantee them a minimum wage and punishment for the wealthy, so long as they aren't Democratic supporters.

Obama "I was instrumental in the sun rising this morning"

2008-09-16T22:08:00.002-04:00

If Obama were to say that, I doubt there would be much media outcry, so much are they in the tank for his Presidency.

We have a serious problem in this country -- our media has stopped doing it's job, and has instead become a wholly owned subsidiary of whatever politicians they agree with. And since a vast majority of the media are liberals, that usually means Democrats, except when there is a really good socialist or far-left candidate like Nader.

The media has proven it CAN be critical -- unfortunately it's proven that it's criticisms are not based in reality. For example, the media attacked McCain for "lying" about Obama supporting sex ed for Kindergarten, and now we know that's true. The media has also had to issue multiple corrections for their coverage of Sarah Palin the last couple of weeks, having fallen for the Obama campaign/DailyKos talking points without question (Palin slashes teen mother budget, Palin cut WIC budget were the two latest false news stories apologized for by Newsweek; see earlier stories about book banning (including publishing a list of books that didn't exist at the time of the purported censorship)).

On the other hand, Obama can say anything he wants, and if he's corrected at all, it's not front-page news. For example, in July Obama took credit for work in a senate committee he isn't on:

“Just this past week, we passed out of the out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee - which is my committee - a bill to call for divestment from Iran as way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon,” Obama said at a press conference in Sderot, Israel.
...
Except that he isn’t a member of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

But because it's Obama, CNN makes excuses for him, not only allowing him a correction, but offering without question an excuse for his gaffe:

In a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday, Obama told the former Israeli Prime Minister, “I could fall asleep now standing up,” after Netanyahu asked him how his whirlwind trip to the Middle East and Europe is going.

The most recent attempt by Obama to claim credit for someone else's work came today, when Obama falsely said he was the creator of the stimulus package:

In Golden, Colo., today, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., took credit for the stimulus package that passed earlier this year.
...
Is that true?

Democrats on Capitol Hill who support Obama say no.

Wanting Obama to win, however, none will say so on the record.

But media accounts from the time make it clear that even though Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., all offered legislation to provide stimulus to the economy, congressional leaders looped them and their legislation out of negotiations.

Apparently, Obama wasn't even there to vote on this bill:

In Vienna, Ohio, this afternoon, McCain said that Obama today "claimed that the Congressional stimulus package was his idea. That’s news to those of us in Congress who supported it. Senator Obama didn’t even show up to vote."

That's true. (McCain was there, and he voted for it.)

Moreover, Obama today was guilty of inflating his role in the creation of that bill.

Of course, most of the media can't be bothered with reporting that a Presidential candidate is once again inflating his almost non-existant resume. They are too busy reporting that Governor Palin (along with thousands of Alaskans) owned a tanning booth -- that she paid for herself.

I wonder if Joe Biden owns a big-screen TV? If he does, Obama will probably insist he invented it.

Obama Lying about McCain Lying (Sex Ed).

2008-09-16T01:52:00.002-04:00

The big example Obama uses of a "lie" McCain told in an advertisement is that Obama voted for a bill that offered sex-ed to Kindergartners.

I've covered the bill previously, showing that the bill did indeed change "6th" to "K", thus applying sex ed to the kindergartners. The text also showed that it was NOT about "inappropriate touching", as Obama insists, but education about sexually transmitted diseases, and other of what Obama insists are "age-appropriate" lessons.

Obama said that the bill applied the "SEICUS" guidelines, suggesting that these guidelines would prove that Kindergartners would only learn about "inappropriate touching".

Maybe they thought we were too stupid to read. After all, the media accepted their memo and never bothered to check the facts, so maybe they could get the average person to be as naive and gullible as the mainstream press.

Well, here are the guidelines. In those guidelines, we find "level 1" applies to ages 5-8 (Page 17), which is the Kindergarten through 3rd grade. And the levels indicate when the topics "should first be discussed" (page 18).

OK, since Obama said he voted for lessons on "inappropriate touching", let's search on the word "touch". We find on page 51, for level 1 (Kindergarten):

Touching and rubbing one's own genitals to feel good is called masturbation".

Whatever you think about this, it is clear Obama's "age-appropriate" guidelines for K-level sex ed was NOT just about "inappropriate touching". Obama is lying, McCain telling the truth -- based on Obama's OWN words, and his OWN reference to SEICUS.

But there's more references to "touching". All of these are level 1 items, to be discussed by 5-8 year olds:

Page 25: Both boys and girls have body parts that feel good when touched.
Page 51: Bodies can feel good when touched.
Page 52: People often kiss, hug, touch, and engage in other sexual behaviors with one another to show caring and to feel good.
Page 54: Both girls and boys may discover that their bodies feel good when touched.

That's 5 times the guidelines have told teachers to tell 5-year-olds that touching their sexual organs will make them feel good. What 5-year-old doesn't want to feel good? This isn't teaching children about "inappropriate touching".

Page 65: A person cannot become infected with HIV by being around, touching, or hugging someone who has HIV or AIDS.
Page 67: Topic 7: (This is the section about inappropriate touching).

Ok, what about all the other things in the Level 1 (age 5-8) discussions? Here are a bunch of them. Ssnce Obama thinks this is all fine for 5-year-olds, I figure no liberal can attack me for this:

Page 26: Men and women have reproductive organs that enable them to have a child.
Page 26: Vaginal intercourse – when a penis is placed inside a vagina – is the most common way for a sperm and egg to join.
Page 27: Babies usually come out of a woman’s body through an opening called a vagina.
Page 27: Some babies are born by an operation called a Caesarian Section.

Do we need to teach a 5-year-old about putting a penis in a vagina? Or that their pregnant mother might be cut open?

Page 29: Human beings can love people of the same gender and people of another gender.
Page 29: Some people are homosexual, which means they can be attracted to and fall in love with someone of the same gender.
Page 29: Homosexual men and women are also known as gay men and lesbians.
Page 29: Making fun of people by calling them gay (e.g. “homo,” “fag,” “queer”) is disrespectful and hurtful.

Remember, Obama voted for a bill that said THIS teaching was more important than whatever they were currently teaching in Kindergarten.

Page 37: Dating is when two people who are romantically attracted to each other spend their free time together.
Page 37: When children become teenagers, they spend more time with their friends and may begin to date.
Page 37: Some adults, including single parents, may date.

Why does a 5-year-old have to know about dating?

Page 51: Touching and rubbing one’s own genitals to feel good is called masturbation.
Page 52: Some boys and girls masturbate and others do not.
Page 52: Masturbation should be done in a private place.
Page 52: People often kiss, hug, touch, and engage in other sexual behaviors with one another to show caring and to feel good.

Why does a 5-year-old need to know that people "often engage in sexual behavior with one another to feel good"? Or to masturbate in private?

Page 53: Topic 4: Sexual Abstinence (NO LEVEL 1)

So we teach a 5-year-old that masturbation feels good and should be done in private, but we can't teach them about abstinence. Hmmm.

Page 61: Sometimes women become pregnant when they do not want to be or are unable to care for a child.

Why do they have to teach THIS to a 5-year-old? To prepare them for Level 2, age 9, when they justify killing babies. Got to start young to convince humans that killing is OK:

Page 62: A woman faced with an unintended pregnancy can ... have an abortion to end the pregnancy.
Page 62: Abortion is legal in the United States up to a certain point in a pregnancy.
Page 62: A legal abortion is very safe.

OK, a few more level 1 items:

Page 72: Men and women are capable of doing almost all the same jobs.
Page 72: Some men and women may be told that certain jobs and tasks are only for women or only for men, but this is beginning to change.

OK. Don't presume that because I listed something, I oppose teaching it, or even oppose teaching it to a 5-year-old. Some lessons in this plan were appropriate. Others were not appropriate for a 5-year-old, in my opinion.

But this isn't about whether I think something is appropriate or not. This is about whether the Illinois law that Obama passed out of his committee required teaching sex ed to Kindergartners.

Obama says McCain is lying, and that the law ONLY taught "inappropriate touching".

He offered as proof the SEICUS guidelines.

And as you can see, FROM THE SEICUS guidelines, Obama was lying. The law DID teach sex education, including masturbation, homosexuality, details about body parts, and even a little indoctrination in cultural change.

Somehow, the mainstream media was incapable of reading the document he claimed would verify his claims. If the media did this, they would KNOW that Obama was lying, and McCain was telling the TRUTH.

Maybe it is a stretch to call this an Obama "accomplishment" (the bill failed). But he certainly supported and voted for the bill. And now he's lying about it.

Obama Sought to delay Troop Reduction Talks

2008-09-15T22:31:00.003-04:00

Update: To be clear: The Obama "response" is that while he did interfere, and while he did try to stop this negotiation, he doesn't believe such interference really would slow down troop withdrawal. Zebari seems to feel differently. And since the force status agreement that Obama was trying to delay WAS the official agreement governing when our troops would come home, it seems Zebari has a better argument.

But in any case, my objection, and the real problem, isn't Obama back-stabbing his base. He's already done that publicly, when he admitted that in the end he won't bring all the troops home, and that he'll re-think his plans after talking with the generals when he's president. The objection is that Obama had no right to interfere in ongoing negotiations, or to argue with Zebari that Iraq should refuse to bargain with the existing administration.

OK, Back to the original post:

What an interesting story. First, the NY Post breaks this story from an Iraqi official. Then the Obama campaign denies it. But then it turns out there is a news story from earlier in the year where Obama actually admitted this (but not the details).

Remember when Canada said Obama had told them not to worry about NAFTA? Obama denied he had given assurances, but then Canada offered proof, Obama had to admit he lied, and got crushed in Ohio?

The media doesn't remember that, because the media has great amnesia when it comes to Obama.

Well, here we go again.

First, from the NY Post. Obama Tried To Stall GI's Iraq Withdrawal:

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."

Well, I think most people can see why this is bad news for Obama. To interfere with the Executive's constitutional job, to undermine an ongoing negotiation, is bad enough. But the way this is worded, if Barack had his way, it could delay when our troops come home.

Obama's campaign decided to deny the story, hoping their media buddies would simply believe them. And it almost worked. Here is the Fox news version of Obama's denials:

Barack Obama’s campaign denied a New York Post report Monday that said the Democratic presidential candidate privately tried to persuade Iraqi political leaders to stall an agreement on scaling back American troops in Iraq while publicly campaigning for a speedy withdrawal.

What did Obama offer for proof?:

A top foreign policy adviser to Obama sat in on the meetings between the candidate and Iraqi officials this summer and said no such conversations occurred, the campaign said Monday.

OK. Look at that sentence, and tell me what is wrong with it.

There is a "top foreign policy advisor", but he is not named. He sat in on the meetings. But the reporter didn't talk to this advisor -- the CAMPAIGN simply said "our advisor says it didn't happen". You have to wonder why the campaign didn't just say "Obama says it didn't happen." Point is, this isn't "two people" against one, because the advisor didn't have to actually say anything.

Anyway, the campaign has one little problem. Turns out that Obama already SAID he did exactly this. So the campaign is literally denying a conversation it has already confessed to previously. (Meaning that they have already admitted that Obama did this prior to his trip, which makes it much harder to believe he didn't say in person what he already admitted to saying in a phone conversation.

Here is the article from June, on MSNBC, Obama's talk with Iraqi Foreign Minister:

He said he told Zebari that negotiations for a Status of Forces agreement or strategic framework agreement between the two countries should be done in the open and with Congress's authorization and that it was important that that there be strong bipartisan support for any agreement so that it can be sustained through a future administration. He argued it would make sense to hold off on such negotiations until the next administration.

"My concern is that the Bush administration--in a weakened state politically--ends up trying to rush an agreement that in some ways might be binding to the next administration, whether it was my administration or Sen. McCain's administration," Obama said. "The foreign minister agreed that the next administration should not be bound by an agreement that's currently made."

So in June, Obama confessed that he argued with Zebari that Zebari should hold up the negotiations for Troop Withdraw until the NEXT ADMINISTRATION. Which is exactly what Zebari says Obama did in July, which Obama is now denying.

I suppose it's possible that Obama, having tried to throw a wrench into the negotiations in June, might have then NOT said anything in July. In which case his "denial" is simply an obfuscation, like if someone says "He confessed to the murder last sunday night", and you respond "I did not confess to a murder last sunday night", but it turns out you confessed Sunday afternoon.

BTW, this was reported by the New York Times as well:

While the Bush administration would like to see an agreement reached before the summer’s political conventions, Mr. Obama said today that he opposed such a timetable.

“My concern is that the Bush administration, in a weakened state politically, ends up trying to rush an agreement that in some ways might be binding to the next administration, whether it’s my administration or Senator McCain’s administration,” Mr. Obama said. “The foreign minister agreed that the next administration should not be bound by an agreement that’s currently made.”

Obama can try to muddy the waters by calling Zebari a liar, and trotting out campaign staffers to insist that Obama's handler at the meeting assures them Obama didn't say this AT THE MEETING. But now that we are focused on this story, we KNOW that Obama said this to Zebari, and confessed to saying this back in June.

So while the Government of the United States was negotiating with Iraq on a plan to get our troops home as quickly as safely possible, Barack Obama argued, urged, and called on Iraq to hold off on the negotiations until he was elected President -- over 6 months.

Obama can protest the story now, but his own words convict him.

There's something perversely funny......

2008-09-14T20:29:00.002-04:00

About Raising Kaine, or any left-winger, actually quoting Karl Rove.

Of course, in the RK case, they actually lie about what Karl Rove said. (There's something simply perverse about lying in a post where you are trying to say someone else is lying).

See, Karl Rove and John McCain are not really that friendly, but the left loves to pretend Rove works for McCain. Of course, in 2000 the left loved to talk about how Rove treated McCain so badly, and how great McCain was and how bad Rove was).

So today, when Rove makes the perfectly rational observation (which I wish more pundits would make) that political advertising is going too far, that hardly seems like big news. But Raising Kaine somehow thinks that is the same as calling McCain a liar. Of course, Rove did say both campaigns went too far.

And Rove gave an example -- Obama falsely attacking McCain for being stuck in the 1980's technologically. Oddly, Rove did not provide any specific examples of McCain lying about Obama. And he didn't give a specific example of where McCain went too far, but I think the whole "lipstick on a pig" would be a great example.

The media is going to work for the Democrats. So the Democrats can make up things about Republicans, and will only get called on it when they are so out to lunch that it offends the sensibilities -- like the whole "Trig is Bristol's child" story.

But the media loves to jump on anything a Republican does wrong -- so Republicans DO have to be better, and we should be. There was no reason for McCain to push the "Obama is insensitive to women. Hillary Clinton's supporters are doing a great job of it, and everybody who wanted to believe Obama's "pig" was Palin already believed it.

The rest of of knew that Obama was calling Palin "lipstick", meaning she was just a pretty face, not to be taken seriously. Which itself would have been a great message, but not after you tried to pretend he called her a pig.

So, which is worse. Obama lying about Palin when he failed to note she had been a Governor (thus misleading people into thinking she was simply a former mayor), or McCain saying Obama called Palin a pig? I don't know.

But I do know that when the liberal democrats start lying about what Karl Rove said in order to make their points, something has gone seriously wrong in liberal-land.

The Bridge to nowhere, in a nutshell.

2008-09-14T19:52:00.002-04:00

The Obama campaign calls the "bridge to nowhere" some of the worst example of pork.

So, let's get this straight.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden both vote, TWICE, to force Alaska to build the Bridge to Nowhere, which they now claim is useless pork.

Through the hard work of Republicans, the final bill allows Alaska to spend the money elsewhere.

Sarah Palin, running for Governor, is asked about the Bridge, and says that in general she does support infrastructure projects. Not a ringing endorsement, but let's stipulate she supported the bridge before she was in a position to see the details, like Barack and Joe would have seen before they voted TWICE to force Alaska to build the bridge.

Once Sarah takes office, she is presented the full picture of the the bridge and other projects. She takes the money that Barack Obama and Joe Biden voted to give to her, but decides to say "No Thanks" to the bridge project.

So Governor Palen takes the money that Barack Obama and Joe Biden voted to give her -- and SHE is the one that they think is the problem?

If Obama was caught giving out walking around money to pay people to vote for him, I guess he'd say the real criminals were all those poor people who TOOK the money he gave them -- but we would all know better.

The problem with "pork" is the perception, and often the reality, that legislators VOTE TO SPEND OUR MONEY, in the hopes it earns them votes from the people who benefit.

This is the first time I've ever seen a campaign try to blame the people who GET the benefit for their pork spending. Obama and Biden voted to send our money to Alaska, in exchange for Ted Stevens voting to send our money to Delaware and Illinois.

And now Obama and Biden want to pretend THEY are change agents, and the problem is the people of Alaska, Illinois, and Delaware who took the money they sent.

This probably makes sense to the DailyKos/RaisingKaine folks. But the only way the media falls for this is if they are in the bag for Obama.

Barack OBama, Still Crazy

2008-09-14T17:56:00.002-04:00

(I'll stop this when Obama apologizes for mocking a vet's disabilities).

Why Johnny Can't E-mail and Obama is shameless (Not mine)

2008-09-14T16:56:00.004-04:00